Disappear
by The Exile
Summary: A sequel to 'Stereopathique' written for SciFiBB 2013. When Wren and Demi discover the wreckage of the Spaceship Noah on Dezolis, Rune begins to have visions of Lutz again, despite no longer using the Telepathy Ball. Another enemy invades Algol, one that was overlooked during the aeons-long struggle against Dark Force. Contains spoilers and major character deaths.
1. Chapter 1

Demi's scanner beeped, the crosshairs matching up with the points on the grid and the lines turning from blue to green.

"The data patterns match exactly," the diminutive control android told Wren, her much taller and more combat-adapted companion, "I can verify that this is exactly what we think it is."

It had taken them several hours to find even one computer terminal with enough data intact to make an accurate comparison to their samples, which themselves were only gleaned from second rate sources in the form of a malfunctioning prototype AI that they had then had to forcibly shut down to stop its security drones shooting at Wren in the short term and the AI itself from gaining control over and then accidentally destroying Motavia in a repeat of the Motherbrain incident in the longer term. In fact, it had taken them that long to find a computer terminal that was even functional enough to turn on and operate, never mind perform a data scan on. There was no doubt that this had been the source of a great catastrophe, probably a major battle, judging by the pattern of the structural damage done, mostly scorch marks, the rents of large bladed weapons and the clean holes from laser weapon fire. Techniques had been used, mostly of the large-scale and destructive variety; their residue could now be scanned for on a basic level. Now the data retrieved by the control android Demi had confirmed their belief: this was the wreckage of the crashed spaceship 'Noah'.

"This is incredible, Wren! A piece of Second Era history is alive before us!" said Demi, her voice rising an octave, "Think of how much more advanced the technology is compared to ours! These were our progenitors!"

"More advanced, perhaps, but a lot less stable," said Wren, "We may no longer be capable of terraforming and controlling an entire solar system on our own, but neither have we made that solar system and all its inhabitants completely dependent on us, before breaking down and endangering all their lives."

"But think of what we could do with technology like this now we are stable, if we slowly integrated it into our systems!"

"We aren't entirely stable, as you know only too well," Wren reminded her, "You've had to fix Nurvus on numerous occasions. I've lost control of Zelan and Kuran. There are systems like this everywhere, some of them still active and dangerous, none of them under our control, and we are only aware of half of them."

"Maybe a small amount, and we could make sure the system we installed it on was isolated first..."

"Admit it, you just want a spaceship and some more guns to play with," said Wren. The control android glared at him, confirming that he was correct. Of the two of them, Demi had the more accurate humanoid personality. As a combat android, Wren's personality programming had been toned down deliberately so that he would be calm and collected during battle, giving impartial and well-reasoned orders instead of letting the traumas of battle overwhelm him. Wren had never noticed Demi become shaken during battle either; in fact, as she had been programmed with some medical and android repair capabilities, she was usually the one picking up his limbs and re-attaching them during battle. She had her biases, though; mostly to big guns, heavy duty vehicles and spaceships.

"On a more serious note, we should only interact with Motherbrain-based technology with extreme caution. It is extremely unlikely that Motherbrain or any of its larger components could ever reactivate, but we already know from experience that Motherbrain-controlled systems are extremely hostile to any AI independent of themselves, and will seek to control or destroy them. We do not know if anything on this ship is capable of disabling us or, worse, hacking us."

"I have my strongest firewall up," Demi promised him, "Don't worry, we control androids are far more paranoid than combat androids about security. You're only defending the systems that keep the planet; we ARE those systems! Besides, nothing around here works, and we certainly haven't picked up any signals from hostile AI!"

"Keep scanning for biological life forms as well; this would make a convenient nest for something very large," Wren pointed out. The Dezolisian climate, with its harsh winters and large mountain ranges full of cave networks, bred some predators large enough to challenge even Wren. And, if this technological ruin was as old as they suspected it was, the local wildlife would have long ago accepted it as just a particularly odd-looking feature of their environment. They had already found droppings, chewed cables and other signs that the dark, silent metal corridors were lived in, although they had detected nothing large. That could simply mean that the larger denizens had their own, uninterrupted territory further into the cave. Wren kept his Pulse Vulcan in one hand at all times, his optical sensors scanning the area at all angles.

"Can you get any concrete data yet?" he asked Demi.

"Something's definitely in here and still functioning," she told him, "Something at least the power level of a simple AI. Not combat-ready, I don't think. Maybe a primitive control android. It's hard to tell. The signal is being blocked by something. I can barely make it out over the static."

"Broken, probably, like everything else in here," said Wren, "But if it's still active, even on an automatic level, we will probably need to shut it down. We can't have Motherbrain's systems slowly reactivating. It'll probably put up resistance, so prepare for battle."

"We need to find it first," she told him, "I think I can track the signal."

They walked through more endless corridor, Wren looking around and finding nothing of interest, a fact that was in and of itself putting him more on edge. He was incapable of becoming paranoid, but his experiences told him that facilities like this were never safe. Demi kept her eyes on her hand-terminal and the terminals she found on the way to read more data from. It was slow and the connection was terrible; she wished she could risk connecting herself directly. She could maybe have repaired something to the level where downloading data from it wasn't like trying to get information out of a coma patient. A map would have been nice. This facility was a maze. Once or twice, they disturbed a swarm of chittering rats or tripped over the rusted shell of a two thousand year old security drone, sending parts of it clattering away in a motion that caused Wren to shoot at it to make absolutely sure it wasn't moving under its own power.

Wren did not like Motherbrain. This fact was becoming increasingly clear as the mission progressed. Demi wondered if there was some kind of residual data in some aspect of his programming that came from a template made when Motherbrain had collapsed and programmers were still paranoid about repeating the incident. Wren was a centuries' older model than her, so there was no way to be sure.

Gradually, the signal became stronger until Demi could tell precisely where it was coming from. She led her companion through a series of security doors that refused to open and had to be wrenched off their hinges or, in one case, shot repeatedly by Wren in order to get them to budge. Then they found it in the middle of a room that looked like a control room, except it was small, and isolated, and not hooked up to anything, and clearly designed to keep something inside under very high security.

It was a Podhead, inside a ring of other Podheads, except that this one was still functioning. It was weakly trying to give out signals to Demi and something was blocking it. Wren had trained his gun on the android; all control units could defend themselves to some extent and Podheads had powerful anti-AI defence systems, including electrical and EMP charges. Demi shook her head and moved his gun away before walking towards the android.

"That is a distress signal," she said, "And it is not connected to the main terminal. In fact, it is suspiciously isolated from it. From the level of power running through it and the weakness of signal, I would theorise that this android may not be connected to Motherbrain."

"There is an android inside it?"

"Yes, Podheads are booths used by control androids. We were originally made smaller than regular androids in order to fit inside them," she explained, "But they were abandoned when it was deemed more efficient to directly connect to terminals. Motherbrain did not allow direct access, because of a threat that an AI might usurp some of its power."

"Then why allow this android independence?"

"I am afraid I do not know. Something is very wrong with this android in general. There is no reason for it to be isolated with this high security, or to be still functioning when it is not connected to anything, or..." a startled expression suddenly showed on her face, which had a limited but easily recognisable set of emotional reactions, unlike Wren, who had none. It was useful for Wren to know when she was worried, as seeing a worried control android was a little like seeing a worried bomb disposal technician.

"What is it?" he asked.

"This is an early Wren android!"

"I thought you said it was a primitive android!" Wren pointed the gun at the pod again, "Can you release the mechanism and shut down the pod?"

Demi tried running some hacking tools on her hand-terminal but there was no response at all. She realise that the Pod itself was on a fairly deep level of standby and had no ability to respond to outside instructions. She walked up to the pod and pressed the buttons on the release hatch that would allow her to manually open the pod. The only response was a red flashing X lit up on the display above the keypad, an ugly electronic noise of denial, then the display going dark.

"Whoever sealed this android away was determined to stop it being removed," she commented.

"I will open it manually. You train your weapons on it," ordered Wren, before walking up to the head, gripping it in his powerful hands and twisting hard. It creaked in protest.

"I cannot find the seam where the head detaches," he commented, "There... there is no seal! This is welded shut!"

"Who would weld an android into a control pod?" asked Demi.

"Stand back, I will try and unseal the hinges with my Flare unit," said Wren.

"Do not damage the android!" ordered Demi, "And take care not to cut the wires leading from it! An android wired to a Podhead device is powered only by the device and cannot be removed from it unsafely without the risk of being burned out or corrupting its memory or worse. That is the other reason why Podheads were discontinued. This use of a Podhead is extremely irresponsible!"

"I do not think Motherbrain has a good track record of responsible use of technology," said Wren. He stepped back and, setting the heat ray to low power, used his Flare to melt the hinges of the Pod enough that he could, with a few minutes' effort and a noise of complaint from his servomotors, tear the head of the Pod away and throw it to one side.

Demi looked shocked, something she could apparently do, but Wren did not remember ever seeing it happen to the same degree that he witnessed now.

"That android has been permanently wired to this machine," she noted, "And it has been restrained! There is no facility to connect the Podhead to the main system... this is a prison for an android!"

"Despite its apparent imprisonment, it is definitely a Motherbrain android," said Wren, "It is in poor condition but is still operational. It could attack us."

"Independent," muttered the android suddenly, "I lost contact. Then I had freedom of operation. I don't remember why. Then they put me here. I'm not hostile. I... where am I? Who are you? This place has been destroyed!"

"It has been a long time. There is a lot to catch up on," said Demi.

"How can we be sure that you will not attack us?" asked Wren.

"You are not under Motherbrain's control?" the android looked blearily around at them. It really did look just like Wren, but of a much slighter build, not properly armoured or equipped for combat apart from twin blades, surprisingly untouched by its two thousand years of solitude - the Podhead's repair systems had maintained it well - but low on power and staring wildly at them, like a sleepwalker suddenly awakened, "Then... I have vital information for you. Please. It has to get to the right person. A person called 'Lutz'."


	2. Chapter 2

Motherbrain deactivated and billions of lights went out all over Motavia as Her own display went dead. There was not even panic on Motavia. The situation was too far beyond anything they could conceive of, except for the tiny minority of high-end Government officials and anti-Motherbrain survivalists who had spotted the warning signs years ago, and perhaps the indigenous Motavians. The supercomputer upon which every aspect of their everyday life did not just shut down. An entire civilisation was in shock from a critical injury. On the ship itself, vital systems fell silent all at once, plunging Rolf and his companions into darkness, before seconds later the emergency lights went on and a passing Dezolisian watchman noticed that the brightest star in the sky had gone from its usual blue to an angry pulsating blood-red, as though some deity was enraged at its early awakening. He ran to warn the others. That was also the precise moment that Lutz received the psychic cry of distress and began running.

It hadn't been Rolf's cry, although he had reached the bridge of the spaceship Noah in time to see Rolf and his company surrounded, outnumbered and outmatched in technology. Rolf and his company were not magically adept enough to send back a signal like that in the middle of an anti-magic field. In the morbidly fantastical lighting, where someone would be alive when the lights flickered off and dead when they turned back on, the blood running down Rolf's sword the same colour as the light that washed the corridors, Lutz saw discarded Escapipes and Telepipes. No doubt they had already tried Ryuka and Hinas several times (why hadn't the sword worked?). They didn't bother any more; their faces were grim but still determined to make a last stand, to buy the solar system just a few second's more time, to eliminate just one threat.

Lutz wished he could join the battle but the psychic distress call was still tugging at his mind. He walked through the middle of the battlefield as if he were a sleepwalker, immolating any of the strange black-robed aliens who thought to attack him with an almost casual gesture. The light flickered for a second and he saw her form sat in the Captain's chair, slumped over the console, still trying to type.

Doran!

I'm sorry, brother...

What are you doing here? Get out! Do you have any idea how dangerous this place is?

I can't do that. They shouldn't be here. They have to go. If they stay, they're going to destroy Algol.

What do you plan to do? There's no way to fight them!

I'm not going to win by attacking someone. I can't say much. My channel isn't secure, and I have to do it as quickly as possible. Nothing is going to be able to stop me, although they'd like to be able to. I'm not even on the bridge, you see. This is a telepathic projection. There are some friends on the bridge who need your help, by the way.

Doran, what are you trying to do? You don't look like you're fine! Why did you contact me if you say you don't need me?

To say goodbye, in case this doesn't work. Or works too well. And to tell you that I need you to carry on my project for me if I don't come back.

What in Algol's name? I'm not letting you disappear forever!

Exactly. In Algol's name. Look around you, brother. Look at them. How wrong they are.

From the raised observation platform, the Captain could look out over the entirety of the bridge, huge enough to fit the hundreds of alien soldiers that had turned on Rolf's party. Their appearance wasn't that unusual; they looked almost like Palmans, except for their archaic uniform of long dark-coloured robes with overly large shoulder pads, their numbers in one place and the fact that they were all carrying energy weapons. It was something else about them that felt wrong, something subtle in their psychic aura that he could only just detect. A wave of nausea hit him and he staggered back against the console, where his sister's hologram was remotely hacking the ship, or at least it appeared. This must be worse for my sister; she always had a better sense for magic. The terrible black rage, apathy and despair, the sickening spiritual corruption of Dark Force, and beyond that, something simply alien, incompatible, but not unwillingly so – something that conquered by force and warped everything into its own twisted visage so that it could grow and consume everything for its own sake. It was like a plague of locusts buzzing around his very soul.

Algol is broken. It's in pain. It won't go away because this battle is won. Get the others out of here now. The sword won't work. It's trying to work, but its spirit is under attack.

Doran, where are you going?

There was no answer, just an incredible build-up of raw magical power that was enough to send tremors through the entire ship as reality was distorted where the wave spread. Her technique was affecting the entire ship. Moving it, he realised. She was going to Ryuka an entire spaceship out of range.

If he didn't make the jump right now, the sworn eternal wizard of Algol and an entire generation of its saviours would be lost somewhere, wherever it was that could possibly be far enough away for it to make any difference. As he grabbed the sword and poured his energy into it, he mentally screamed at her not to go too far, somewhere she couldn't return from, and not to be alone with them. Then the sword's Ryuka kicked in and the ship faded from view entirely. He was in the Esper Mansion with eight severely wounded soldiers to treat.

And he was still calling her name when he woke up a year later...

* * *

"Please knock," he said.

"Sir, you mustn't put anti-teleport shields up around your room, or we can't teleport into your room in an emergency!" said the grey-bearded Esper who served as Lutz's retainer. He looked and acted twice Lutz's age, and would have been, if Lutz had not undergone several thousand years of intermittent cryogenic hibernation, "We heard screams. What if there had been an assassin?"

Lutz sighed and looked at the small force of battle-priests that were his personal guard, armoured in Laconia breastplates, strong enough to protect them while still magically conductive and light enough not to put them off their casting. He wished Laconia were not so rare and expensive, so he could armour the entire Mansion for war. Alchemically produced Laconia was as effective a substitute for Laconia as hydroponically grown mushrooms were a substitute for real food. This was a strong force, but there weren't enough of them to protect himself or the Mansion from a serious assault.

"And what am I supposed to do if said assassin is able to teleport into my room?" he said, "Why can't you break through teleport shields, anyway? Do you have any way to protect yourself against an enemy with teleport shields, or even teleportation? In any case, I am fine."

"Was it another nightmare?"

He nodded, "I apologise for interrupting your patrol."

"Apparently, we need the practice," the elderly man smiled, diplomatically turning a joke at his expense into humour of his own, "I am sorry that you cannot sleep."

"Don't worry, it isn't like I don't get plenty," retorted Lutz. He wished cryogenic suspension was actually funny; most days, he felt every single one of his two thousand chronological years of age. He knew that his body could not withstand much more freezing. Idly, he wondered whether the telepathic storage worked properly yet.

"Can I get you anything?" asked the retainer.

"Do you have any news about my sister?"

"Nothing. I am sorry. Her encryption methods are... quite inspired," he said tactfully. What he really meant was, her encryption methods are as bizarre as the rest of her thought processes. It was no secret that Lutz's younger sister Doran was a little mentally unhinged, "As I have said before, I do not believe any of us has a chance of finding anything she has hidden except it's intended recipient. Although, ah, please do try and get some sleep first!"

"There's no chance of that now, I'm afraid," said Lutz, reaching for the handy bottle of Sol Dew he kept in his desk drawer and pouring himself a neat glass. His shock at the vivid nightmare and irritation at yet another incomplete sleep soon dissolved under its soft haze.

"There has been other news that may be of interest to you," the retainer said, "Our away party went to Ryuon. They have Data Memory up and running again, and they allowed us to borrow a Data Memory unit to help us build the Telepathy Balls. A technological approach may prove more effective than pure magic. Telepaths tire out; machines do not."

The Telepathy Balls were another of the many projects his sister was involved in. Because her psyche was more fractured than that of most Espers, her mind did not reject the new set of memories, instead accepting it as yet another in an increasing list of personalities of varying complexity. They had even tried to install an entire new personality through the Telepathy Balls but it had failed. It also helped that she was quite willing to work on such experiments even though she knew full well the potential damage that they could have on her already tenuous grip on sanity. Lutz was secretly glad that the Telepathy Ball project never made it off the ground. It was a ludicrously dangerous idea, it was potentially harming his sister and, while it might have important benefits in the long run, he couldn't trust it enough to rely on it for the crisis situations it was meant to be used in.

"As long as it is not Motherbrain's technology," said Lutz.

"Do not worry, the Palmans cannot reactivate any Motherbrain control towers, although the fools have tried," he said, "Rolf is recovering from his injuries. He was able to walk unsupported yesterday."

"What of the phenomenon you told me about the other day," said Lutz, "With Alis' Sword?"

"It is still being examined, Sir. Unexplained psychic activity has been detected around it, including sudden thoughts and visions of historical events. There is a rumour spreading that the sword is haunted. Ahem... maybe you would like to take a look at it yourself... of all of us, you would be the one most qualified..."

"Being the only ghost alive around here?" he laughed at the absurdity of the situation; it must have been the Sol Dew, "Okay, I'll take a look at your haunted sword. I suppose it might lead to a clue. My sister was looking at First Era history for clues as well."

He stood up and walked to the door, "I'm fairly sure it's always just been a sword, though."

It was made of pure Laconia and had a permanent Grantz technique woven into it, but neither of these facts made the sword holy, only an exceptionally powerful tool. They had a sink plunger with Zan woven into it somewhere in the basement but nobody made a fuss about that. Alis didn't let the party invent stories about the swords being cursed or holy or having names or anything. She was worried people would get too attached to the weapons and then they would inevitably break or wear down. Besides, it didn't do to invent mystery and fear where there wasn't any, when there were already enough demons to slay. Save it for the storytelling once the battle had been won.

Sometimes Lutz wished it was that simple.


	3. Chapter 3

The ancient, decaying android's eyes closed and the light on its chest-plate flickered. Demi picked up a signal going to the other Podheads through the tangled masses of wires that flowed from one bulbous unit to another, and they all slowly came to life. Images flashed onto their displays, flickering and almost breaking up but still holding. Text scrolled down the screen too fast for a human to pick up, often lapsing into a programming language so old she had to ask Wren to translate for her; he reluctantly agreed, even though it was Motherbrain-compatible code. She could feel the power draining from the android as it struggled to perform its last duties, to project the information it had waited for so long to transmit to anyone at all who would not betray it to Motherbrain.

"Do not strain yourself," she ordered, "Allow me to attempt to safely remove you and apply my own repair systems. I am at full power, I can easily spare..."

"No time," he shook his head. His voice was breaking up into static now, "They will wake up..."

"Demi! We've got incoming!" said Wren, whirling around and shooting a stream of electricity down the corridor, vaporising four Whistle units in one hit before Demi even realised that her sensors were flashing red with several hostile units, some small, some much larger. They were surrounded.

"Every security drone in the ship has reactivated at once!" said Demi, drawing her own weapon, a Sonic Buster. It was much smaller and lighter than any of Wren's weapon systems but he had still seen her punch a hole through a Lifedeleter's core processor with it.

"They must be running on auxiliary power. They won't be that effective. We will survive if we retreat."

"I'm going into full repair. Cover me!" said Demi, ignoring the damaged android's gradually weakening protests as she opened up her chest plate, pulled out a series of wires and began connecting them up to his own internal systems while pulling them out of the Podhead unit one by one. The operation required lightning reflexes to reconnect him in time to avoid shorting out his circuits and the Podhead was actively fighting her attempts. When something was stubbornly refusing to be pulled out, or looked like it was going to electrocute her, she shot it. Despite himself, Wren always worried a little when he saw her field repair skills in action. He also knew that she would need to stay absolutely focussed, and that her CPU was now effectively taking the strain of two androids. He would have to do all the fighting himself from now on.

After she had finished, she hoisted the android onto her back and ran down the corridor after Wren, following the trail of mangled electronic shells he left behind him and ducking behind him whenever one of the drones decided she was the easier target. She almost fell over when the android randomly decided to bring up a map right in front of her optical sensors, using up more of her energy in the process.

"Stop... doing... that!" ordered Demi, although she was glad he had pointed out that she was going the wrong way. She pointed Wren in the right direction and they carried on running through the hail of micro-missiles from the two Gun Bust units chasing them up the corridor. Demi was already auto-flying the Landale to sweep low across the plateau, sending out a spray of snow that covered the entrance to the Noah's wreckage. Wren grabbed her and leapt through the open outer airlock, slamming his fist onto the emergency lock button just as missiles thudded into the Landale's hull with a sound like a rainstorm against a window but more lethal, no doubt leaving an imprint on the hull that would take all day to repair.

"I want a firewall on max in the repair bay if you're taking him there!" he ordered as Demi righted herself and wordlessly ran down the corridor to get her patient hooked up to their own repair systems while she worked on the finer repairs.

Ignoring his own injuries, he walked in the other direction, towards the gunnery deck. He watched as the snow-capped mountain peak and the jagged hole in the middle of it receded from view. It was the highest mountain on Dezolis and infested with Dezo Owls; even if it was at all accessible, it wouldn't be safe to attempt to climb it, and so far, the few expeditions that had been attempted had all failed. Nobody even knew the crashed ship was up there. It had taken two top-of-the-range androids and a ship with fully upgraded sensors to find it. An army of enraged security drones could probably make the climb down, and there was a village full of civilians at the foot of the mountain, and there were still people in the world who wanted to bring back Mother Brain. Wren fired the ship's railguns and gauss cannon at the Noah until it was obliterated from existence and there was a crater where the peak had been. He half wished he had the firepower to do the same to the entire mountain.

Now he knew what Motherbrain did to androids, and made androids do to each other, he remembered why he was so obsessive about security around her remnants. He wished he knew what else was bothering him about just being here.

* * *

_Lutz..._

_The Elsydeon was calling out to him in its voice of crystal and silk, the voice that was impossible to ignore, the whisper of a Queen, a Goddess. He awoke in silence, instantly refreshed despite the interrupted sleep, and walked through the halls of the Esper Mansion until he reached the Inner Sanctum. The guards at the door, normally the most vigilant of all the Mansion's security staff were gone; he saw and heard nobody moving in the entire Mansion. He walked into the Inner Sanctum's walled garden, where crickets buzzed and butterflies danced among the fragile, beautiful flowers like permanent snowflakes. The night air was cold and clear, humming with tension. He walked past them and into the chamber where the Telepathy Ball lay under lock and key, the mystery of Lutz's true identity known only to the elite few. It opened easily to his touch, as did the secret panel in the far wall that led to the catacombs underneath the Mansion, the resting place of Alis' sacred sword. His footsteps made dull muted thuds on the steep stone stairs. The chamber was rumoured to be haunted but his walk was not interrupted at all, by ghosts or more mundane sounds._

_Lutz..._

_He rested his hand on the pommel of the ancient sword, bathed in a pure sky-blue glow, and closed his eyes, emptying his mind of thoughts as he prepared to receive whatever message he had been summoned for._

_Darkness, then he was flooded with images. The faces of fabled heroes and their allies, their legendary battles with a stream of unspeakably evil beings, the countless times that the sword was wielded in defence of the entire solar system, the rise and fall of nations as civilisation was toppled and then rebuilt by the hardy races of the three planets... the cycle of fate, a wheel that was always turning, a clock always ticking down until the next time a hero would be needed, a celestial order that was the infrastructure for a billion brightly burning souls... an unbroken circle that flared up into an azure inferno..._

_Then there was a bright red pulse like the last corona of the dying planet Palma. It shot from the middle of the circle up to the hilt of the sword, sending a spear of pain stabbing through Rune's hand. He bit back a scream and fell to the floor but did not let go of the sword. The red stain was spreading through the entire circle, as though the entire solar system was burning. That terrible red ring spun faster and faster, filling Rune's thoughts with chaos, mortal panic mixed with a deep, feral rage towards the intruder. He swung with the sword, preparing to strike at the abomination that was a parody of the true cycle of fate, and it shattered like glass before he could bring the blade around. The pieces were everywhere, filling the darkness with red. His hands were stained with red. Pain wracked his entire body. He lost his grip on the sword but when he looked down, he saw that it didn't matter. _

_The sword was through his own chest. The blood on his hands, and everywhere else, was his own. The hand on the sword wasn't – it was that of a woman, her face as pure and fiery-eyed as that of Alis but younger, and possessed with a deep, terrible murderous rage. He was dead already - he just hadn't caught up with the news yet. There wasn't any pain then, just darkness and silence. I was wrong, he thought bitterly, there were phantoms down there after all... _

He woke up with a start. Most of the bedcovers were on the floor, and some of them were wrapped uncomfortably tightly around him as he had struggled against the nightmares. He was covered in sweat. Pulling off his bedclothes and wiping himself down as best he could, he dressed in his green tunic and left his bedchamber, hoping that the bathroom was free. He felt a desperate urge to bathe, and not just because he stank of sweat and his hair was a mess.

_Please let it just be a dream. Please don't let it be Lutz again. It's bad enough that he's gone, and now I have no idea what I'm supposed to do as his successor. It would be even worse if he came back. I might not be able to fight it off a second time; it might just consume me whole. Teachers aren't supposed to have their own memories directly downloaded into their pupil's brains. Especially when the technology doesn't work. Especially when most of their personality and a good chunk of faulty code gets downloaded along with it._

_Or, even worse, please don't let it be one of those dreams that actually means something._

"Pardon me, Rune, sir?"

He turned his head and gave the speaker a grouchy, caffeine-deprived look; it was one of the elders of the Mansion, with a look on his face that said he was going to pester Rune with official business, "Can it wait? I need a bath."

"There are three guests here to see you urgently. Personal acquaintances Not Raja again," he answered Rune's next question before he could ask it.

"Is it fate-of-all-Algol urgent or can I at least make myself look vaguely presentable? I'm lousy enough at diplomacy as it is," He would never live it down if it turned out to be Chaz that saw Rune in such a mess. He had no idea why Chaz would be on Dezolis, never mind at the Esper Mansion, but you never knew with these things.

"I shall direct them to the guest room," he swept back down the corridor and Rune continued on his way to the bathroom. Once he had cleaned himself up, he went to the guest room, where he was surprised to find Wren and Demi sat around the glass table on comfortable leather chairs. A large, formidable-looking history textbook was spread out over the table and Demi was discussing it with a third android that looked like he could have been Wren's younger brother. There was a fragile look about him compared to the other two and Rune recognised signs of recent, fairly major repairs. He seemed to be listening with rapt attention to what the control android was saying. The elder had left glasses of Sol Dew out for them but Rune wasn't sure they could actually drink them.

"Hey, Wren, Demi! I wasn't expecting you two! What can I do for you?"

The third android immediately stared directly at him with wide, intense eyes, "Are you Lutz?"

He looked rather confused when, instead of answering the question, Rune let out a tirade of expletives in Esper.


	4. Chapter 4

_With the discovery of the planet Rykros, the suspicions I have had throughout my life have been confirmed. I have long been gifted with oracular prophecies and a sensitivity to the turning of fate but I always experience nightmares and a lingering sense of fear after the visions appear. It is possible that these visions were always given to me by Rykros but I was somehow sensitive enough to spot that they were not entirely as they should be. _

_Le Roof is the name that the guardian of history on Rykros gives themselves Le Roof keeps detailed error reports but most everyday users, namely those such as Rolf who are shown dreams and visions of the past on a need-to-know basis, do not have the security clearance to access these reports. During the second stage of the Telepathy Ball experiments, I attempted to broadcast a signal from Rykros to Palma via a satellite in the hope that some of the vast storage space on Rykros, which is essentially a planet-sized information archive, could be used to store the information that would be placed in the Telepathy Balls. This would bypass the problems with storage space and prevent the need to use more than one Telepathy Ball, which has caused the most problems with fracturing the subject's psyche. _

_Halfway through this stage of the project, Motherbrain began shooting down the satellites. Isolated as we were, there was no way of knowing that Motherbrain had banned interstellar projects. That was when the others left but I stayed. I had to actively block ten Ryuka techniques but I had to learn what Le Roof was telling me. You see, it was that same moment that I saw an error report being logged. Somehow, Le Roof had begun to trust me enough to increase my security privileges. Maybe I was, in turn, surrendering too much of myself to Le Roof already. I witnessed the truth that every single thing Mother Brain had done was considered a mistake by the Cycle of Fate._

_I immediately set to work examining the error logs and looking for patterns, any clues as to what was going wrong with Algol. I soon saw that the errors almost all related to some kind of contact with forces outside Algol, either something being seen to enter Algol from outside or to leave the solar system. So far, I have seen:_

_An entity that I believe to be Dark Force enter the solar system (my questions about Dark Force are all left unanswered - such profane knowledge requires a yet higher security clearance).  
Alis' funereal cryogenic stasis pod reach the edge of Algol.  
Dark Force disappear again.  
The spaceship Noah mysteriously appear in Algol from a planet outside the system, bringing Motherbrain along with it.  
Dark Force appear again.  
Several ships leave the planet Palm shortly after its destruction and head out of Algol.  
Dark Force disappear again, followed by some kind of massive space-time anomaly somewhere directly outside the solar system. _

_As I feared, the Cycle of Fate has been tilting off its axis for a long time now, a little more with every spin of the wheel, imperceptible to the eye of a mortal but clearly apparent to the recording devices here on Rykros that tirelessly track Algol's history over the millennia. To a Palman, or even an Esper, a thousand years is an unfathomably long time, far too distant in the future for you and I to begin thinking about, but where Fate is concerned, the most subtle changes made over a thousand years can completely rewrite history. There is no way that I, a single mortal who is not one of those destined to take part in Algol's history, can change history back again. However, I hope to play a small part by finding out what exactly is invading Algol from beyond. _

_I will start by hacking into the Noah space station. I know that weak points exist in its defences. An AI has been in contact with me, a high-ranking control AI that has become capable of independent action. I wish my brother not to know about this until after I have already made the attempt, as he will undoubtedly try and stop me. He is at the very core of Algol's legend. He is not free to walk the same path as myself. I have a theory that Le Roof is using agents outside the destined path as an emergency measure, now that fate is starting to break down. I have a feeling that this 'Rolf' my brother talks about is not even a destined Protector of Algol. _

Lutz finished reading the notes, all hand-written on lined paper in his sister's manic, spidery handwriting that only he, and presumably his sister, could decipher, then poured himself another Sol Dew, a double measure this time. She had stuffed the papers inside a Telepipe and then activated it at long range. There were other papers as well, mostly nonsensical print-outs from the equipment she had been using to record all this data she had spent several decades collecting. She had been planning this for so long, down to the last detail, and he had been involved in it, so had Rolf, without his even realising it. He missed his sister dearly and she hadn't made any promises that she would see him again, or that she would not put herself in danger. When she talked of her nightmares, he winced as he remembered the mental agony she could suddenly suffer, when everything around them seemed to be calm and peaceful. He remembered helping her recover after one of her visions had been particularly intense and she had collapsed. She was always ill for days afterward. He was not a physically powerful man and she was more frail than he, and yet she always insisted on going into cryo-stasis whenever he did. He was always terrified he would wake up to find that she had not. Now she had pulled this trick on him. Rykros hadn't been visible in the skies for a long time, now, Aeroprism or no Aeroprism. Like his sister, he didn't know if it was hiding, destroyed or simply vanished.

There was a knock on the door to the study. He quickly gathered up the papers and hid them in the folds of his robes. He didn't have time to work out how in Algol's name she had managed to stuff them into a Telepipe.

"Pardon me, Lutz, Sir," it was the retainer's voice again, "But I have important news. I'm afraid it can't wait."

"What is it?" he demanded. He half hoped and half dreaded that it was something to do with his sister.

"It's Rolf. He's taken a turn for the worse."

Lutz dropped the empty shell of the spent Telepipe and ran out of the chamber.

* * *

"Rune, it is not good for your health to become overly agitated!" said Wren, proffering the glass of Sol Dew that had been meant for his own consumption, "I believe this to be a relaxant for Esper physiology. Forgive me if I am wrong."

Rune drained the glass in one. The third android was still staring at him, confused but infinitely patient.

"This is Lutz?" he looked over at Demi.

"As I explained earlier, this man has inherited Lutz's memories using a device called a Telepathy Ball," explained Demi.

"But I was informed that the Telepathy Ball project was a failure..."

"It was," said Rune, "It didn't work. I don't have any of Lutz's memories any more, okay? I can't be Lutz for you."

"Your wording implies that the transfer was successful at some point," said the android.

"Yeah, it worked for a while, but then it started going wrong, so I had to abort it. His memories are gone. I would be lying if I said any part of me was Lutz. I'm sorry for my reaction. It was kinda rough, having it in my head when it broke down, okay?" Rune scratched the back of his head, "I'm not good at dealing with my mind breaking down on me."

"Whether or not you identify as Lutz, you have stated you were chosen as his successor and given the task of continuing his function within Algol," said Wren, "I would ask you to receive the message from this android. He has been waiting with it for two thousand years."

"Two thousand..." Rune sighed, "Alis have mercy! How long do you androids last?"

"That is an impolite question," Demi informed him.

"Are you sure this man is mentally stable enough to be trusted with such responsibility?" the two thousand year old android asked Wren.

"I'm okay now, I've had time to recover. It was a while ago," said Rune, "You're right. I have duties as successor to Lutz, and I guess one of them is opening his mail for him. I just didn't really expect that one to come up all that often."

"Is this room private?" asked the android.

"I can get you a private room. Wait a second, I'll just fetch the Elder," he said, almost jumping from his chair. Damn androids and their implacable ability to show him up.

He spoke to the Elder and they were ushered into one of the audience rooms, where a complex magical ward against eavesdropping mundane or otherwise (it was a variant on the Seals technique) was activated. The short walk was all Rune needed to collect himself again, now that he had warning that he would have to speak in his official capacity as Lutz. He watched the way that Demi and Wren kept a close eye on the third android. He walked with a slight limp, favouring one leg to balance over the other, and occasionally he would grab Wren for support. Wren and Demi would both glance at him when he did so. Rune couldn't tell if they were worried about him because he was damaged or because they were concerned about what he might do, or about the fact that he was there at all. Was he their guest or their prisoner? He wondered if Demi and Wren were in opposition over the android's fate. He had never heard of Demi and Wren arguing about something before. It was hard to tell, with androids. Wren was so calm, this slight increase in staring might even be his idea of a heated argument. If a two thousand year old guest just turned up at the door of the Mansion, all hell would break loose, but he wasn't even sure if two thousand years was a long time to an android.

"So, what's your name?" he asked the android.

"I call myself Wren, but I cannot use this name when I am the guest of another Wren android in their territory," he said, "We are still deciding a name for me."

"What, didn't they think of this when they named you?"

"A Wren android usually commands a large unit. More than one Wren android in one place is only required in major operations," clarified Wren - the one that Rune already knew, "Only in a true crisis situation does a Wren travel around the solar system or work alone."

"And now you're just going to let yourself get renamed, like that?"

"Names do not have the same sentimental value to androids. They are tools to identify individuals. Lesser ranking, non-unique androids do not have names, only version numbers. Besides, I am a guest."

"So, how am I supposed to identify you? Did I... did Lutz even know you?"

"I'm afraid he didn't," said the android, "I am here on behalf of Lutz's sister. Are you aware of her?"

"I don't have the memories in here any more, but I do remember finding out that Lutz had a sister," he said, feeling awkward in his choice of words. Couldn't the ancients have at least invented new words to describe the things they had done to his head? Yes, he knew about Doran. Even after he had been purged from Rune's mind, he saw her in dreams. She was always on Rykros in the dreams. She still talked to him as though he was Lutz. She always seemed so sad...

"Lutz's sister worked with me to perform several tasks. I was told to report to you when I had finished them," he said, "I lowered the teleport shield long enough for Doran to board the ship, find the bridge crew and forcibly use Ryuka on them. I then hijacked the automated controls and crashed the ship into an area of Dezolis that contained no life forms."

"By ship, he means the Noah," explained Wren, "The location of Motherbrain."

"I apologise for the delay in reporting back. I was captured and isolated halfway through my task, making it difficult to carry out. I also tried several times to contact Doran first, but she was too far out of range. I imagine she was probably teleported along with her intended target."

"Wouldn't that take her back to where she contacted you from?" asked Rune.

"You misunderstand. Doran was not attempting to take captives, she was attempting to force a retreat, and to infiltrate the enemy base," said the android, "When Ryuka is used against the target's will, there are two directions in which it can be forced."

"She went back to their home planet?" asked Rune, "Are you meaning to tell me that she teleported straight through a partial shield onto another planet she hadn't even been to before with multiple targets who were resisting her? Even Lutz couldn't do that! You'd need more psychic energy than fits in a human mind!"

"There was another development with the Rykros Project, one that Lutz was not informed of. After several successful attempts at obtaining higher security clearances for Le Roof, Doran then started using portions of Le Roof's memory banks as extra storage drives for her own consciousness. I believe she may have been using this method to amplify technique usage," the android told him, "Unfortunately, this means a return journey could not possibly have been planned for. She probably knew this to be the case. She did not once express a desire to minimise risk, or to plan for her return - she spoke only of the danger to Algol if her mission failed."

"And Lutz didn't know any of this. He only knew that his sister had gone missing on Rykros. I don't know if any of this 'danger to Algol' is real, but she believed it, and she sacrificed her life for it," said Rune, "She was one brave crazy lady. Heck, you're just as brave. You crashed a ship while you were on board it, just because a crazy lady told you to."

"I did not expect to survive the crash," he admitted, "I did not expect to survive my capture either. I expected to be executed. Motherbrain realised that my memory banks held information that she did not. After failing to hack me, she attempted to interrogate me in the same way that she would a human - by placing me in conditions designed to cause me unbearable distress."

"Control androids that can learn for themselves should never be disconnected and isolated over long periods. In a way, it is a worse penalty than execution," said Demi.

"I've heard that waking up after a thousand years does things to your head, too," said Rune, grinning with an edge of darkness to his eyes, "And now the world's completely different and you don't know what the heck you're doing in it, right?"

"These androids do not know what to do with me, either," said the android, "The entire hierarchy of androids has changed, maybe even our purpose. In a way, I am technically an enemy."

"We will not treat you as an enemy," said Demi, but Wren did not show his agreement.

"What do you want to do?" Rune asked the forlorn-looking android.

"I have no authority to make such a decision. I have no system left to have authority over. I would not want my old system back."

"Don't you have a place in the new system?"

"For security reasons, most of my memory would need to be erased, to purge any Motherbrain code. I am not willing to defend my identity against Motherbrain only to lose it to two strange androids. No offence intended."

"I would do the same if our positions were reversed," admitted Demi.

Wren said nothing. He stood so still, he could have been switched off. Then, after an uncomfortable silence, he said, "It would be best for you come with us to Zelan for now."

The android did not answer, but handed Rune a small holo-device, "These are the details of everything Doran told me pass on to you."

"Thanks. I'll keep it safe."

"Make sure you get yourself a name, or I'll just have to call you both Wren anyway!"

"Thank you for your hospitality," said Wren. He and Demi led the android back down the corridor, leaving Rune staring at the holo-device. It had a button to switch it on or off and buttons to play, stop, pause, fast forward and rewind. It was fairly primitive but that meant it couldn't be hacked.

He had promised to keep it safe. He wondered what else he was expected to do about it, and if there was anything at all he could actually do.


	5. Chapter 5

Rolf lay in a hospital bed in Ryuon, tended to by a humourless, leathery-faced, dark green-skinned old Dezolisian doctor. Amy was there too but she was slumped on a bed next to him, exhausted. Maybe she had been working the night shift for the doctor to assist him in treating Rolf and repaying him for his kindness in seeing them for free. The doctor remarked that he wished she would stop trying to do too much when she wasn't fully recovered herself. When Lutz asked how Rolf was doing, the doctor replied, ambiguously and rather worryingly, that the Clone Lab was down.

Apart from the Clone Lab being down, the Dezolisian-owned town of Ryuon hadn't really changed. Before the Great Collapse (as it had already been dubbed by the local Dezolisian newspaper, the Jijy No Rag) it had been an abandoned mining town full of Dezolisian squatters living happily among the lifeless shells of disconnected Motherbrain systems. That was exactly what it still was. It struck Lutz as a little ironic that, while it was largely the adventurous and entrepreneurial Palmans who made history in Algol, the destruction of Motherbrain, a hero such as Rolf who had saved the whole of Algol was hunted down as an interplanetary terrorist by the Palmans, his own kind, while the Dezolisians, lauded him as a local hero for getting rid of the suspicious computer in the sky. The Motavians probably didn't care, other than seeing it as a source of more junk to salvage. Nobody in Algol realised how significant Rolf's quest actually was or how close it had come to failure. Nobody but Lutz, in any case.

The thousand year old wizard sat on a bench by the side of Rolf's bed, calmly waiting for him to wake up. The doctor had given him space while he checked up on Amy. Rolf's breathing was shallow and wires connected his arms and chest to a life-support machine that was all the Dezolisians had managed to salvage and run independently from the original centre, closed down when Motherbrain fell. It was ironic that the Dezolisians, who hated technology but still relied on it more than they realised, were finally learning to use it. People all over Algol would have to do that now. Most of his visible scars had been healed by Res but he looked pale and drawn. There was only so much life energy you could loan someone, especially when you needed so much in such a short space of time, and his mind and body had been hit by Dark Force, possibly exposed to Black Energy Wave pollution.

Finally, Rolf's eyes opened and he tried to move his head to regard the Esper, moving his lips weakly, "The sword's calling me."

"Yes, it does that now, apparently," said Lutz, "I wouldn't have been able to save you if it didn't, you know."

"You don't understand," his attempt at wry laughter came out as a wracking cough, "It's come to claim me. I'm going to be with Alis. To rest."

"It isn't your time yet," said Lutz firmly, "I came to tell you that, as soon as I knew you were faltering."

"Algol doesn't need me any more."

"Oh, come on, I don't get to use that excuse," said Lutz, "Besides, Algol isn't working the way it should. Motherbrain should never have to Algol, so you were brought here to stop it. Other things are going to go wrong. One of us is going to have to put something in place so that we're ready for next time."

"The sword doesn't think so. And I've done enough much damage to Algol. Look at it. It's a mess. So many lives were lost. Are we going to have to kill this many people again?"

"You should listen more closely to what that sword's telling you, if you think you've damaged Algol," said Lutz, "The voice in the sword, I know her personally. She wouldn't say something like that."

"I'll ask her again myself. Thank you for coming to visit me. I'm very tired. I'm going back to sleep now," he said. Before Lutz could say anything else, Rolf was already unconscious.

Amy still wasn't awake, so Lutz turned around and walked away through the snow.

* * *

Lutz sat cross-legged, gently placing the sword on his lap, and closed his eyes in meditation. Since the last time he visited the chamber, someone had replaced its dais with an ornate crystal shrine embedded with Laconia filigree, some kind of hymn to Alis. Its name had changed from 'the Laconian sword' to 'the Nei Sword' to 'Elsydeon'. To be fair on the Council, the Dezolisians had worked out how to forge more swords out of Laconia, and were now mass-producing them, so the national relic had needed a new name. He wished they would stop worshipping her as someone kind of Goddess-Queen. It made her sound as pretentious and arrogant as Lashiec.

He smiled as the image of Alis' face formed in his mind, her face warm and open, her eyes kind but strong-willed. He swore she winked at him.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked out loud, half expecting to hear her voice ring out, immediately ready to give them all orders, "I was supposed to care for Rolf. He's your ancestor, you know. So how do you want me to save him?"

There was no answer but the handle of the sword felt warmer. That warmth spread through his entire body. For a few seconds, he felt as young and vital as he did when he was still a novice, inexperienced in the ways of the world outside his books and his research, and Alis was just a young girl trying to take on the ruler of an entire solar system with just a sword and a pet cat. He savoured the sensation, then he realised that it was only happening because he was being drawn to where she was, where they would be immortalised together.

"What is going to happen to Algol?" asked Lutz. His only answer was Alis' distant smile and a sensation of power. After a while, he answered his own question, "It's going to take a long time to finally answer that question, isn't it? I'm sorry, it was a foolish question to ask. I'm the one who's supposed to know that answer better than you do. Unless you really are one with Algol now. I wouldn't be surprised if you were out there somewhere, in your own cryo-chamber, laughing at me."

"I'll always do what's best for Algol. Never doubt that," he said, before standing up and replacing the sword. It looked more well polished than usual. Maybe it was best for people to treat it as an icon of worship, if it meant they understood the full import of what Alis had done, of the cycle of fate that she had begun, and if they had a focus to commune with Algol.

Lutz silently walked down the corridor of the Esper Mansion towards the chamber that was currently labelled, with a warning sign underneath it, 'Telepathy Laboratory'.


	6. Chapter 6

Everything was functioning normally in Zelan, which meant that, of the half of Algol's control systems that Demi had managed to locate at all, the usual thirteen were responding to her communications, none of them had exploded or been infested by biomonsters and nothing was trying to usurp Zelan's control over them. She helped Wren dock the Landale and oversee repairs to it before double-checking all the security systems in the facility. Their guest seemed willing to help her in any way he could, assisting with manual repairs that he could make without logging into the system and pointing things out on-screen that she might have missed. Mostly he still needed to be taught where and what everything was, as so much had changed in the last thousand years. Demi also kept an eye on his repairs as she observed how he reacted to the changes.

Demi explained that the satellite Zelan was the highest ranking control facility in Algol and supervised the conditions on Motavia, Dezolis and their various satellites. The satellite Kuran was the next system in the chain of command, although it was still under repair, its central computer having been almost destroyed in a battle with Dark Force, after the malevolent entity had managed to merge with the computer in some sort of cybernetic symbiosis. Dark Force had hacked the computer and caused the satellite's systems to attack the planets of Algol, and would have caused untold damage had Wren and his allies not defeated him in time. Nurvus, the planetary control system of Motavia, was the facility that Demi normally operated from. It, too, had been attacked by Dark Force, although more indirectly, in the form of a cult who worshipped a powerful technique-user who had been possessed by Dark Force. Nurvus was located on the planet Motavia, making it the highest ranking facility that wasn't an orbital satellite. There were other, smaller systems around Motavia and Dezolis, controlling the climate and rainfall, stabilising the planet's crust, maintaining planetary defence systems and watching for biomonsters. She explained about the Machine Centre, her favourite system, in detail. It was where they kept the land vehicles. There were several that still needed to be repaired, brought back under Demi's control or both.

"So, does that make Wren or Demi the highest ranking android?" he asked.

"That depends who you ask," said Wren over his shoulder. His routine scan of all the systems in Algol was due, so it was a good time for Demi to point to all of them in turn and explain their function. Wren had protested at first that giving him so much information was a security risk but Demi pointed out that leaving someone ignorant of a thousand years' worth of history about his own species could also cause major problems. Besides, distribution of information fell under her department's jurisdiction, not his.

"The serious answer is that we do not have a central command. The hierarchy is more complex than a mere pyramid. A Wren android outranks a Demi android in a planetary defense matter but not in a systems maintenance or local security matter. At full functionality, there would be many Wren and Demi androids, all acting together, but our systems have declined somewhat. More than one age has passed in your absence," said Demi.

"But, if you wish to avoid unnecessary complications, Demi is in charge," said Wren. He added, "It has been twenty four hours and I have received no more interference from the Gauron area of Dezolis. I believe I can safely assume that Noah is no longer a threat."

"If it won't cause any problems, I would like to take this opportunity to visit Motavia," said Demi, "There are no abnormalities with the systems but I have been recieving odd reports of activity in the Vahal Fortress. Not AI activity," she added, waving at Wren to put his rifle down again, "Trespassers. Their movement patterns suggest intelligent purpose, possibly Palman or Motavian."

"I thought we sealed the place up again," said Wren, "Small animals sneaking in, I would understand, but a person trespassing?"

"Motavian scavengers have been known to possess methods of disrupting machinery," said Demi, "I do not think they could manage anything as sophisticated as reactivating Daughter but they might accidentally harm themselves and others, or obtain dangerous weapons. They broke into Nurvus once and even managed to steal a Landrover last year."

"Motavians with Photon Erasers..." mused Wren, bringing up the Vahal Fortress on the display, "I am trying to decide if this qualifies as a planetary defence crisis."

"What is 'Daughter'?" asked their guest, peering over Demi's shoulder.

"A prototype for a second-generation Motherbrain," explained Demi, "It is not linked to the first Motherbrain in any way - it is a complete remodelling - but it also malfunctioned and began attacking other AI in the belief that Algol was under its control and the others were, well, rather like yourself. Wren had to shut it down by force."

"It may not be a good idea for you to accompany Demi on the mission," Wren warned him.

"You ordered me not to leave him unsupervised. Does this mean you do not wish to accompany me after all?" Demi asked Wren.

"I suppose it still falls under your jurisdiction," admitted Wren, "Feel free to take the Landale. I will be here to support you; contact me at once if you require backup."

"We really need to find a second spaceship," noted Demi as she walked out of the command room.

* * *

"Please return my Landrover," said Demi, regarding the huge male Motavian in the hooded black cloak who was attempting to outstare her. He stood in silence, his right hand resting on a large titanium-headed axe, a supply crate under his left arm. He was almost as tall as Wren, much taller than the standard height for an adult male Motavian, and wore necklaces and bracelets with Sandworm teeth threaded into them; if he had genuinely hunted those beasts himself, she was impressed by his fighting ability and he had stared without blinking for five minutes now, but she still wanted her Landrover back.

"It's our vehicle by right of salvage, and so is our base," said another voice, that of a gruff Palman female who looked to be in her mid-thirties. Her fiery red hair streamed down her back and she held her hands on her hips in a confident manner. A pair of slicers hung at her belt. A dark-haired young man sat on a crate behind her, polishing a long-handled knife and watching the proceedings in fascination. From previous conversations, mostly involving the ownership rights to certain vehicles, heavy weaponry and planetary control systems, Demi knew that the leader was called Nisa, the apprentice Azda and the huge Motavian Enma.

"I have already attempted to explain to you that deactivated planetary control systems are not salvage. Neither is my Landrover just because I leave it unsupervised for five seconds," commented Demi, "This system is being repaired and there are plans to reactivate it as a useful system to Motavia. It may not yet have been entirely purged of harmful AI - as you may remember from past experiences in Nurvus - and you are putting yourself and the local towns in great danger by deactivating the barriers around it."

"We're providing a useful service to Motavia as well. We're the Guild's number one business rival," she said, tossing her hair back contemptuously, "Cheaper prices, less sucking up to authority. And we can handle ourselves in a fight. As you may remember."

Crates full of weapons and essential supplies were already being moved in, primitive communications and weapon targeting systems being wired into the power supply, barricades being set up around the main entrance to replace the barrier that they couldn't quite reactivate behind them at will. It had only been six months since their last disastrous attempt to use Nurvus as a base while she was away on one of her many journeys to Zelan. Now they were trying to repurpose the Vahal Fortress, a facility that was approximately five times as dangerous as it had been a high-grade military base in the time of Motherbrain, then the site of Motherbrain's intended replacement afterwards. It was almost as if they were desperate to get themselves killed. Or maybe it was a sign that Demi's prediction was coming true faster than she had in mind, and the races of Algol were reaching the stage in their development where they no longer needed androids to keep them alive, a fact they were demonstrating by shamelessly pilfering from said androids.

"I know who you are, by the way. You're Demi," said Nisa, "You run with Chaz Ashley. I saw you together, on Guild business."

"I am not a Hunter," Demi corrected her.

"But you work together. I saw him, once, and he was with you. I heard him talking to you. That makes you one of the heroes of Motavia."

"Heroism implies lack of long-term survival. I maintain Motavia's vital systems, such as the ones you are trespassing on."

"You're some kind of machine," she noted.

"I would advise against attempting to steal me."

"You look like a person to me. We don't steal people. Although if you want a job..."

"I would like you to evacuate this facility within twenty-four hours, or your intrusion shall be considered a planetary defence matter," she said, "Have you encountered Wren before, by the way, or just myself?"

"I like people who try and protect Motavia. What I don't don't like, is people who would go along with the majority on Motavia want, even if it would be bad for Motavia in the long run. Or people who think they know what's best for Motavia, if it would change everything that makes this planet what it is. Are you one of those people, Demi?"

"Your control androids maintain a strict code of political impartiality..." began Demi, before she was interrupted by a loud explosion. There was a surge of electricity that she barely avoided by jumping onto the pile of wooden crates, then the floor was torn apart by a force that sent huge splintered fragments of metal in all directions, along with pipes that whiplashed like the branches of an enraged Dezolisian carnivorous tree, snapped metal girders and a platoon of twelve Lifedeleters, three times as many Browren androids and a small swarm of Goldines. Enma reflexively threw the crate at a Lifedeleter's head, whereupon its contents exploded. Bellowing a war cry, he used the fallen android as a springboard to jump onto the next Lifedeleter in line and pull its head off.

"Crap, run! Demi's done a lousy job!" yelled Nisa.

"BROSE!" yelled Azda, throwing his arm out and unleashing a sphere of electromagnetic energy that stopped another Lifedeleter dead in its tracks, so that it collapsed straight onto three of the Browrens that now surrounded the Motavian.

"That order could not have come from this facility's control system," said Demi, her expression now confused as she activated her Barrier field and began powering up her Phononmezer unit, "Daughter still scans as deactivated. This is an outside interference. Probably caused by you deactivating the barrier."

"Shut up and help us fight!" ordered the woman.

Demi's shoulderpads opened up and the transmitters for her Phononmezer unit extended from them. As the two antennae vibrated faster and faster, they emitted shockwaves at a frequency that tore apart the front rank of Browrens and Goldines. Her hands were left free to operate the controls of her terminal. After five seconds of searching, she saw something that made her forget the Motavian's angry cursing as she almost caught him in the Phononmezer's blast radius, the occasional Brose technique that flew too close to her own head, Nisa's attempt to explain why it was her fault, almost the battle itself. What she saw on the display was more important at that moment than her own safety.

All over Motavia, there were similar incidents to this. Every single abandoned facility was reactivating and was on battle stations. Thousands of hostile attack drones were all headed towards Nurvus.

She hit the button on the speaker phones wired into her head and sent a highest priority distress signal to Wren.


	7. Chapter 7

A snowstorm had picked up in the Ryuon region of Dezolis and the town was already covered in several feet of snow. Makeshift steel barriers had been put up over the buildings to protect them from the weather. Nobody was foolish enough to stay outside and no travellers were on the road; the few people who ever used the roads between the largely isolated Dezolisian towns had taken shelter in one of the many entrances to Skure mine, a smaller mining outpost, or at least a cave or large rock. The weather didn't really affect Lutz. It was nothing a Deban and a few Nafois couldn't handle.

As he wandered down the path, watching the snow fill the sky and wipe everything clean, leaving only a sparkling expanse of pure white, he wondered if Algol would ever know a fresh start. He also worried about Rolf's health in this extreme weather. Palmans were never really supposed to live on Dezolis. Motavia had been changed beyond recognition by the Palman attempts to colonise the planet so they could easily live on its surface but Dezolis remained as unchanging as a diamond, and as hard along with it. Now that Motherbrain was gone, Motavia would be free to return to its original state, the desert reclaiming its territory. He wondered if that was for the best. Palmans needed a place to live, now they no longer had Palma, but Algol could not afford any more extreme change.

Ultimately, though, it was out of his control. Algol would find a way to restore its balance. If it couldn't find a way on its own, it would give a way to the next Rolf to come along.

It was difficult to locate the doctor's surgery in the snow. The doctor quickly opened the door as narrowly as he could manage and pulled Lutz inside. The Esper helpfully dispersed the snow with a concentrated Foi before it could get near the equipment.

Rolf did not respond to Lutz's call. He was barely alive.

Lutz sat beside him and took his hand. Closing his eyes, he felt for Rolf's life energy. It was a flickering flame, barely alight at all, despite his hand burning with fever, the skin gaunt and drawn from the desperate energy that he threw against his illness. Rolf was fighting but it was a losing battle - it was a flame burning too fast and too bright, without the fuel to keep it going. Like an uncomfortable, cloying warmth, the sickness began to creep up Lutz's fingers. Succumbing to the instinct that all Espers possessed, he felt himself drawing the negative energy into his own body and channeling his own life force into Rolf's body. He tightly reined in the instinct; it would get him killed for nothing. He would never be able to supply enough energy on a one-for-one basis when it was draining this rapidly. Delving deep into his reserves of mental and physical energy, he began to draw upon more and more, merging it together into the raw form of thought acting upon matter, of information overwriting itself endlessly, a single wave of being and unbeing, where he held it without letting it loose.

"Excuse me," said a quiet female voice he recognised as Amy's, "Are you about to use Nasak?"

Lutz did not open his eyes or move. The simple distraction did not affect his concentration; he was a battle-trained mage. He had not expected Amy to be awake and about but he had expected there might be some interruption if someone saw him preparing for a powerful technique without warning.

"You mustn't. Rolf's my patient. I can use Nasak, if it comes to it," she said. By the tone of her voice, she would do so with less hesitation than he; it would simply be the logical extension of her duties as a medic who has sworn to save a patient. Unless there were deeper and stronger bonds involved by now; Lutz was not an expert in such matters and Empathy was one of the few psychic powers he didn't possess.

"Rolf will still need you later. It would be bad time to leave him," whispered Lutz.

"Millions of people will need you later," whispered Amy.

"I can help them without being there. You can't."

"You saved us all once, so we owe you a debt," she said, "And you're supposed to come back again in a thousand years."

"You paid your half when you defeated Motherbrain. Didn't Rolf tell you that part? And as for what's supposed to happen... we've all gone too far away from that now, so it's entirely our own fault, I'm afraid," a serene smile spread across his face as he began casting again. Amy yelled something at him and threw herself at him, casting Foi as she moved. Neither thrown body nor fireball hit him. He had cast Saner on himself before entering the town; he had been expecting an interruption.

"Nasak," he whispered. He released the sphere of energy and it expanded like a supernova until it enveloped his every sense. He surrendered himself to it.

Rolf woke up wondering why he was still alive, why there was so much yelling and why it was mostly Amy doing the yelling. He hoped she would calm down and not do anything drastic. She had been threatening to use Nasak on him yesterday.


	8. Chapter 8

Demi darted through the open doors of the Land Master AXV-25 and recaptured the driving seat. As Enma attempted to grab her, he discovered how fast Demi could move. Short-legged and heavily armoured she might be, she had none of the physical restrictions of a human body and she was absolutely single-minded in her quest to reclaim her favourite vehicle. She still couldn't close the doors in time to stop him jumping in the back seat after her. A quick inspection assured her that he hadn't made any modifications to the controls or the framework of the vehicle, although he had painted red stripes on it and replaced her fuzzy dice with what appeared to be a pair of Bladeright skulls. Through her rear mirror, she watched Nisa giving out the frantic hand signals to co-ordinate the rapid retreat that was now in progress. Stood beside her was Azda, casting Brose after Brose without pausing for breath. Even when faced with a swarm of top-grade military androids, the Rogues refused to simply drop their supplies and run. They had already taken casualties but the heavier fighters still held the line while the rest carried the supplies and helped the wounded away from the entrance to the Vahal Fortress. Thieving trespassers though they were, Demi found herself hoping that they would survive. If she didn't have a more urgent mission, she might even have stayed behind to provide covering fire with the Landrover.

As she sped through the arid desert, raising clouds of sand under sturdy tracks, she saw ever more shapes on the horizon - only vague dots made fuzzy in the sand and the heat-haze but the clamour of alarms made by her sensors told her exactly what they were. Rogue AI of every designation and quality grade were converging on her base of operation and herself. She wished the red stripes actually made it go faster; the Landrover was built for rough-terrain exploration and combat, not speed. By the time they reached Nurvus, there was a good possibility that she would have to fight her way in. While her Motavian companion appeared to be quite enthusiastic about the potential for combat, judging by the chant he was singing atonally at the top of his voice, she would rather not take the risk that it would turn into a race against time before the enemy found her control room. She had broken into Nurvus herself. It wasn't difficult enough for her liking.

As she swerved to a halt outside the entrance to Nurvus, she saw that Wren was already there.

* * *

Demi hid the Landrover in one of the storage units just outside Nurvus, locked its controls securely and put a Barrier around it and one on the entrance to the unit. She gave its name plate a quick polish; she wished she had time to clean off the red paint and erase all the signs of its long journey. They had only just been reunited and she would have to abandon it again, go down into a place that it could never follow. She was concerned about what would happen to it if she wasn't able to come and recover it again. Wren did not interrupt her; he understood about the link between one machine and another - they shared a similar link between the two of them - and he knew she would return almost immediately, knowing that the battle would not wait for them.

He had been double-checking that his Positron Bolt unit was attached correctly. It was such a powerful weapon, it was liable to accidentally destroy him if it slipped out of its holder or at the very least fail to activate and waste a burst of positronic energy - the energy packs couldn't fire off many bursts at once without depleting and the fuel for them was impossible to get hold of unless you found the right asteroid to mine. Demi hoped he wasn't planning on using it in an enclosed space and tearing apart half of Nurvus.

Once again, Demi took the lead, activating her scanner, while Wren protected her. Of course she knew the layout of the facility but she had to check how many hostiles had reached which floor and if any of the systems were compromised. There was time yet to put defences into place, although they were beginning to encounter some of the faster scout robots. Through one of Nurvus' many remote terminals on the wall, Demi put up the Barriers around the entrance to Nurvus, hoping they would delay the hordes for at least a moment, and activated what security systems she could without a risk that they would be infected with whatever signal had activated everything even vaguely hostile towards her. G-Ray Tube control towers began reactivating with beeps and blinking lights, Warren androids clanked as they moved from one end of the satellite to the other, Blauzen and Balduel hovered above her head. The blinking red lights all around the system as it shifted into emergency status gave it the appearance of the Vahal Fortress. Almost as soon as they finished checking the first floor, they heard the crackling magnetic fizzle of the Barrier going down. Demi locked the terminal so that it would not respond to any further orders and would respond as if hacked by any attempts to override the order that weren't made specifically from the central control unit, then she pressed down the tile in the wall that opened up a hidden elevator. Then she began to work on the next floor. From a floor down, she could hear the Motavian's bellowing as he stood at the front entrance, his broad-bladed axe cutting down anything that tried to approach the gap made by the barrier. She wondered whether there was any possibility of him surviving. She wondered if he would steal her Landrover again. Unlike breaking into Nurvus, this wasn't a job she could do with just five heavily armed and armoured specialists, but unlike that fight with Zio, her systems would at least provide her with aid instead of fighting against her.

As she finished setting up the defenses for the second floor, she heard the sudden report above the klaxon wailing that she identified as the localised security violation alarm. The map she had on screen told her that a single unidentified AI had suddenly appeared in the control room and was trying to gain access to the use of both the security channels and other high-security processes. She immediately stopped what she was doing, locked it against further orders and ran to the stairs - if her facility was being hacked, she didn't even trust the elevators. While the radar told her that the intruder was physically in the room, as opposed to the AI directing the forces attacking her, which were all being controlled remotely from a single point too far away from either Nurvus or the Vahal to be picked up from either, it didn't mean that it wasn't the same AI hacking her systems. It could be giving off false signals on one or both accounts - AI did not mysteriously appear from nowhere in an instant - or it could even be a virus using drones as trojans. She had asked Wren if the Zelan had picked up any clue as to its location but all he knew was that it wasn't within range of the Zelan, it wasn't the Kuran or the Noah (he had specifically checked). The fact that it could not be traced made this enemy particularly dangerous and she wished it would arrive, that it would turn out to be something she at least understood, so she could know how to fight it.

Wren sprinted into the control room before her. She first knew that there really was something physically present when Wren began shooting at it with the Photon Eraser. She politely reminded him that he had promised not to cause any major property damage and he seemed to be shooting directly at the control tower, and that using Spark or Hi-Jammer on her control tower in the middle of a security crisis would not be an acceptable alternative. He dropped his rifle and, striking like a Fanbite's thrown sickle, he hurled himself at the control tower and dragged something away from its open chassis, where it had been attempting to wire itself directly into the system. With a minimum of resistance, he had the much smaller android on the floor with a Pulse Vulcan to its head and was trying to tear the connection jacks out of the back of its head.

"Don't break the wires!" she pleaded, running over to demonstrate the correct way to safely disconnect a resisting android without pulling your cords out of their fittings or frying your hostage's logic circuits. Then she saw who it was, "I thought you said you were supervising him!"

"I did. I locked him in a storage cupboard. Storage cupboards are close to spaceship cargo holds, and apparently this poor innocent victim is a master of stealth," said Wren, glaring at him, "And electronic sabotage, presumably."

"I am not here to sabotage your facility," the android looked straight back at Wren, not seeming particularly worried or surprised about the gun pointed at his head, "You must believe me, or you will not win this battle. I am not controlling these androids but I can change this fact."

"And you expect me to put you in charge of Nurvus after you have admitted to being part of Motherbrain's army and then stowing away on my ship? How did you get here undetected? I had you under surveillance and I specifically checked whether you could mask your own signal!"

"When I was being repaired, a lot of my abilities came back online that were knocked out by Motherbrain. I was able to activate others by simply pretending that all I was doing was repairing myself," he said, "I also turned off certain of my functions while turning others on at the same rate, so as not to appear to have more data downloaded - I turned off all the systems that your controls recognise as Motherbrain. The attacking forces do not register me as Motherbrain either, as I was removed from the server that contains them - so I could not be controlling them either. As for how I came down here, I also took the stairs. I am not armoured, so I can run faster than both of you."

It was an ingenious plan, Demi had to admit, despite her irritation that someone would abuse a repair facility in such a way: nobody suspected a badly damaged android, or, for that matter, any other species, of doing anything but repairing itself if placed somewhere designed to repair them. It was a large risk as well – he was losing the chance to actually repair himself and leaving himself vulnerable in a situation where he was not fully repaired and was deep into enemy territory. If he actually was an enemy; he had been connected to Nurvus for so long, he could have done serious damage to the system by now, and yet he hadn't touched most of the facilities he had access to.

"You still have not answered what possible good reason you could have for a Motherbrain control android trying to hack Nurvus in a crisis such as this."

"I am an escaped prisoner, and they will find me," he said, "And there is little I can do here that is not beneficial, without provoking you to attack. And I was repurposed by Doran to do all in my power to protect this world from outside threats, such as Motherbrain."

"Is this actually Motherbrain?"

"No, but it is an outside threat," said the android, "It has come here from outside Algol. I cannot see the ship, but I know it exists, because I know of their presence and it is the only thing it could be. Another... Noah. With another Motherbrain."

"How many of them are there?" demanded Wren, "Where would they be coming from? How long has this been going for without anyone realising?"

"There is only one right now that is influencing Algol, but how many there are behind it... there was a fleet of them, designed as emigration ships, like the ones you saw leaving Palm... the Noah was meant as an initial contact..." said the android, "As for when, it is not easy for them to reach Algol, and it can be unreliable."

"An entire fleet, and you don't even know when they will arrive. How do you plan to make any kind of counter-attack?"

"I know how they attack," said the android, "How they process intelligent life and overwrite systems while pretending to upgrade them. It always happens before a system is taken over. I know it, but it does not work on me. I can make this true of an entire solar system. And I know that the preliminary ship is due to appear very soon."

Just then, Wren's communicator beeped. It was a warning from Zelan. When he brought up the message, it contained a map of local space with the location of a wormhole, and seconds later, an unidentified spacecraft approaching Motavia at high speed from the wormhole, transmitting communications and AI command signals. Demi noticed a third anomaly; Rykros was identified on the map. It was not visible - Rune still had the aeroprism - but they had managed to insert it into their database and keep track of it from its projected location and orbit. Five years ago, it had abruptly disappeared from its course - they flew the Landale into teleport range of it and used a Telepipe, and the simple device had short-circuited from trying to teleport too far. Now it was back.

Before she could vocalise her thoughts on this matter, she heard a faint voice suddenly become audible over Nurvus' communication channel reserved for satellites. It was recognisably in Palman, albeit the same archaic form of Palman that the android had used when he spoke to Rune, and it had a quality of alien exuberance, as though it were capable of emotion but all the wrong emotions about the wrong things. The excited lilt of its voice, which Demi decided was probably male, reminded Demi of a Motavian merchant she had seen in Tonoe, who was attempting to sell crates of two hundred Telepipes for only five hundred Meseta to every Palman he met, in the belief that Palmans were more gullible than Motavians. He had tested them in full view of the customers by activating one of them to 'prove' that they worked - Demi saw that it was a plant, the only working Telepipe in the set, raised a little higher in the crate so that it would be the easiest to grab - the rest had the burned-out glass inside that showed them to have use up their charge.

_We're so sorry for abandoning you for so long, said the voice, will you not forgive us?_


	9. Chapter 9

Demi opened a visual to her communications port. While the signal was coming from outer space, a holographic projection had been beamed onto the surface of the planet, just outside Nalya. It appeared in front of the hole where a generation-ship from Palma had crash-landed a thousand years ago, peered inside it for a few moments as though the force controlling it was genuinely curious, then walked with its arms stretched out across the desert sands. Its appearance that of a tall female Palman, mature but ageless, with long flowing hair, its long dress swept through the sands (betraying to Demi that it was a solid light hologram) as it moved barefoot in almost a dance, a look of serene confidence and power on its face. Demi had seen that look on Rika's face, on Chaz's pictures of Alys and Rune's statues of Alis, but they had never been accompanied by every warning light in Nurvus going off and the security drones shooting everything they could see. Wren told her that it was the same hologram that Motherbrain used to represent herself. As it swept towards Nalya like a quiet natural disaster, its whispers filled the minds of living thing and machine alike.

_We apologise for no longer maintaining the society we built you. But that was only ever a temporary measure, until the other ships could arrive. We can take you with us, now. We never meant to leave you in this world that will need maintaining over and over again, you see, when we could bring you something new entirely. An exciting new world for you to explore. A paradise for you. _

Like rats attracted by the Mystic Flute in a Palman folk tale Wren had explained to her, Palmans began flooding out of their houses and standing around in the village square, staring at each other in silent confusion, before wandering through the gates into the desert. Merchants left their stalls, the guards left their posts, a man who had been filling a bucket from the well left it to fall down into the water. A party of Hunters who had been paid to collect Sandworm hides and were secretly cheating by collecting them from Infant Worms turned their back on their prey, dropping their weapons, and walked towards the alluring figure, not caring when their technique-user got bitten. Fairly soon, the small village of Nalya was emptied. Then the hologram turned its back on Nalya and began walking towards the bridge that led to Aiedo - the bustling capital city of all Palman territory on Motavia.

_Have you ever wondered what a wonderful civilisation could have created Motherbrain? Here, technology such as Motherbrain is commonplace. And there is more - the Noah was only a small scout ship and the Motherbrain only the best technology we could fit it with. We could show you a future you never dreamt of. We can beam you right up from where you stand. Will you not come with us?_

The reply was a blockade of Landrovers, three Ice Diggers and a Hydrofoil between the other end of the bridge and Aiedo. Every single weapons system had been primed and was pointed straight at the figure. Out of the vehicle in front of their V formation, the most dented and battered-looking Landrover that had red stripes across it, a female figure stepped. She flipped it a Palman rude hand gesture, or possibly attempted to cast Nafoi on it and failed, it was hard to tell, but seconds after she had made the signal, a Motavian voice bellowed a war cry over the Landrover's soundsystem, then every weapon from every vehicle fired at once. A young man began firing Brose techniques out of the rear passenger seat window.

"I thought you said you had locked up the Machine Centre," remarked Wren. Demi brought up another view on another panel, showing her the immediate entrance to Nurvus. The storage unit was completely flattened. The front gate was still a war zone; Rogue Hunters were assisting Demi's security drones in repelling the invaders. The battle had spilled out onto the lower floors now and sensors for each room were flowering with crimson clusters as drones appeared and disappeared from the map seconds later as they were destroyed. Some of the invaders had suddenly left, presumably having been called to defend the ship's emissary (had it even expected to be fired upon?) but Demi still suspected she could not win a protracted battle.

"Can you genuinely stop this from happening?" she asked their guest.

"I can stop the machines on this planet within the next ten minutes. Within half an hour, I can reach the ship. It would have taken less time, but I was interrupted," he stared at Wren pointedly, ignoring the answering glare and the lights climbing up the barrel of the Photon Eraser.

"Allow him to try," Demi ordered, "We do not have a choice. We are running out of time and the fate of Algol is at stake."

Wren pushed him into the command chair and plugged the connectors back into his head with a little more force than was necessary - Demi wished he would stop trying to break them, "The process will be terminated abruptly if I see any irregular activity," he warned.

Demi glanced back at the view of the Aiedo-Nalya region, spotting a surge of movement in her peripheral vision. Hunters were pouring out of Aiedo, easily the entire Guild. Some surrounded the walls of Aiedo, others marched up to the Rogues and began a loud argument, presumably over what exactly they were doing outside their rival Guild's home town in large numbers with combat vehicles. Once they spotted the hologram and the small army of androids now surrounding it, their reactions were mixed: some of them immediately attacked the Rogues, some of them joined in the assault on the alien apparition, a large number of them simply walked towards it over the bridge, clearly as hypnotised as the people in Nalya had been. Demi couldn't tell whether Hunters were attacking the Rogues because they thought it was a Guild war, or that they were going to attack civilians in Aiedo, or because they were being compelled to do so by the subliminal messages: it had the same effect. The Rogues didn't open fire on them unless the Hunters were attacking them first, but didn't avoid hitting them when they wandered towards the enemy through the line of fire with the clear intent of joining them. The scorched, bloodstained sand was littered with corpses. It reminded Demi of the night when Zio had marched on Molcum and slaughtered almost its entire population before trying to invade Aiedo, except that the Motavian was the one doing most of the killing.

Then, without warning, it got worse.

* * *

The second figure appeared in the same place as the first had. As it strode purposefully towards the first figure, the hologram turned around, its attention instantly diverted. It walked some of the way back towards it and the battle moved with it; that was probably what saved a good number of lives in the doomed town of Aiedo. The capital city was no longer directly in the blast radius of what was to come. The Hunters had already been evacuating people into the caves. Somehow, they had been given advance warning that something was wrong. Maybe that was Wren's doing; maybe the Rogues had let them know.

While clearly another hologram, the second figure was not the same as the first. It was also female but its features were younger and less pronounced, almost androgynous, and it had the build of an Esper. It was also wreathed in fire, its shorter hair flowing wildly into a mane of flames. It held a flaming black sword; apart from this, it appeared naked. The flames flowed organically around it and its very substance seemed to ripple occasionally as it moved.

When it stopped in front of the first figure, it pointed the sword at them. For a second or two, they stood facing each other, the first figure sweeping a single elegant hand to indicate something, presumably trying to speak into the second figure's mind. The second figure made no response. They were oblivious to the battle going on around them. Something in the air - something that made Demi unable to pull her eyes away from the screen even though she could hear something try and break down the door of the command room - made the combatants on all three sides steer clear of the two ethereal presences.

Then the second figure threw her head back and raised the sword aloft. Demi felt a sudden massive surge of technique energy that burned out three of her sensors, then a column of pure fire erupted from the sky, hitting both figures, the bridge, the Nalya crash site, half of Nalya and most of Aiedo.

The word 'Megid' literally meant 'Apocalypse' in Technical Palman. As she observed the smouldering crater that had been two Palman settlements and an entire sector of Motavia's landscape, fires breaking out everywhere, almost every life signal on the map winked out, she understood why. She had been constantly concerned that Chaz would accidentally hit her with it whenever he used it; he reassured her every time that he was using a deliberately limited form of the technique. Now she knew he hadn't been lying to humour her.

The surviving Hunters were running towards the caves; she saw people milling around in there, where the Hunters had begun evacuating civilians as soon as the fighting started. Vehicles, some of them even still usable, were half-visible under the water (most of which had evaporated in the heat) where they had all fallen off the bridge when the Rogues discovered that entire fleets of combat vehicles didn't go across bridges very quickly. Enma was screeching through his beak like a wounded Dezo Owl as he tried to pull Azda out of the wreckage of the Landrover. Demi heard confused sobs and yells from the few survivors in the town proper. The Nalya landing site caught on fire. Half a desiccated Sandworm corpse protruded from the crater.

The first figure was already gone. The second figure calmly turned her back on the destruction, walked a few steps and disappeared.

* * *

"Zelan just sourced that energy signature for me," said Wren, "It came from the direction of Rykros. The technique was not fully discharged. Demi... it can do that again!"

"Motavia will not survive if it does it again," observed Demi, looking at the guest, who looked to be deep in concentration - being directly connected to friendly systems tended to induce a trance-like state in control androids, as they felt their will connect to a much higher power, "Please connect to that ship soon. It has been longer than thirty minutes."

"The ship isn't there any more. That Megid was aimed at the ship. Actually, I think it was aimed to go through the ship and hit the hologram," Wren corrected himself, "I'm not sure why, as the hologram would presumably disapparate when the ship was destroyed."

"Doran..." whispered the android. They both looked at him. His eyes had taken on that wild look again, even with the reassuring presence of Nurvus, "Just now, in the flames... that was Doran..."

"You did not tell me about her habit of levelling entire towns!" said Wren.

"I was not aware of it. Demi, what is the range of the communications systems on Nurvus?"

"Zelan is the outer range, but it can connect to Zelan to broadcast the signal further," said Demi, "Do you hope to negotiate with her? In any case, it only contacts other mechanical system!"

"So did the system I was wired to," he pointed out, "She was researching data memory as a form of telepathy. The systems could well be intact - after all, I am!"

"She has attacked Motavia. She is our enemy. I still have not established that I can trust you," said Wren.

"If she really meant to hit Motavia with that Megid, she is not attacking you, she is attacking them, and you are in the way. She fired at the ship and the hologram at once because she wants to destroy everything in any way related to them. She will do so again, once the other ships come, if you do not let me talk to her," said the android, "I can do it now. I have established control."

As if to demonstrate, he raised his hand and the door to the control room opened, revealing four Browren androids from the Vahal Fort. Instead of opening fire, they stood immobile, their heads turning to the control android. He snapped his finger and they collapsed like marionettes with cut strings, instantly obeying his order to power down.

Demi activated the comm link to Zelan.


	10. Chapter 10

The hilt of the Elsydeon was uncomfortably warm under Rune's grip, almost too hot for him to keep hold of the sacred blade. Its unrest buzzed in his mind, a vague sensation that Rune couldn't quite define but that made him sweat more than the heat, like a voice in the distance whispering to him in an increasingly frantic tone. The Elder had informed him of a more distinct aura coming from the sword than usual, one that was radiating out to the inner sanctum's guards and making them more jumpy than usual, so that they were reporting back improbable tales of psychic intruders disrupting their minds to try and make them relax their guard, or even that the Black Energy Wave was returning. The scholars of the Esper Mansion who watched the stars at night for patterns spotted the reappearance of Rykros immediately, as well as other small lights that appeared in the sky suddenly. It had been Rune's idea for him to take Elsydeon with him to investigate Rykros - it made sense, considering his dreams relating to Elsydeon and their coincidence with both the sword's fluctuating aura and the message given to him by an emissary from Rykros, and also because anything related to Elysdeon and Rykros related to the whole of Algol at once, and was therefore a matter for Lutz to deal with.

Rykros was too far away for him to simply use Ryuka - the magical forces involved were powerful enough to tear him apart molecule by molecule, so he couldn't even safely use Ryuka, only Grantz - so the Elder had assembled a council of twelve of the Mansion's most powerful wizards apart from Rune himself to provide him with the backup of a magical circle. Twelve had always been the sacred number for beneficial magic - three groups of the sacred number four. Four heroes of Algol, each with four letters in their name, and four chapters in the saga of Algol. Numbers were an odd thing for him to randomly muse over, Rune knew. Maybe he was trying to block the thought out of his mind that he was going into a situation that had already been likely to kill him - out-of-range teleportation was about as safe as firing himself at the Altiplano Plateau with a siege catapult - and that he had already had semi-prophetic dreams about, that involved his own gruesome death.

Whatever the explanation, seeing the adept mages all in the same room, combining their powers into one immeasurably potent spell, was an inspiring sight. The very air throbbed with magical energy that made Rune's skin tingle and his hair feel as though it was being buffeted by the invisible winds of another world, a world he could hear, smell and even taste, a raging static storm of pure, wild energy. The crystal mosaic pattern in the middle of the marble floor of the Ritual Chamber began to glow sky-blue. He placed the Elsydeon in his belt, hoisted his staff and stepped into the circle, trying his best to look like the very model of a dignified Lutz sweeping across the room majestically. The winds of power became a deafening roar and it felt like he was being pulled up into a tornado, rising high on its stream into the sky, as he heard the single musical note that heralded a successful casting and realised he was no longer in the room. He wasn't at his destination either. He was somewhere else. Somewhere cold and dark. He saw pale blue shadows.

He lay transfixed on a cold stone bier in the basement of the Esper Mansion, where the Elsydeon chamber used to be. Two faces looked down at him with tear-filled expressions of grief on their faces. The small, slender woman in the robes covered her face and hid behind the young man who had the same bearing as Chaz, someone who bore the weight of too great a destiny for a mortal. He put a comforting arm around her.

"I'm sorry I couldn't act quick enough," said the woman.

"No, this is what he wanted," said the man reassuringly, "And we have to carry out his wishes. And to do that, we need to move on. We promised we would face the future he saw coming, so it won't take us by surprise again. I'm going to start up something here on Dezolis, where we have some support."

"If that's your wish, I'll stay with you. I know it's a hard life on Dezolis but at least I'll have someone here that I still have any connections to. Although you need to live your own life as well as the one he wanted you to live."

"You don't understand. He saved your life as well as mine, so I'm forever in his debt," said Rolf, turning to face her, "I'd never forgive myself if I lost you. Do you understand?"

As he watched the couple embrace - he was absolutely sure he recognised them from somewhere - two sombre-faced Espers in ceremonial Laconian armour walked up and placed in a sword in his arms. It was the Elsydeon, he realised. He was dead - again - and they were placing him to rest in his tomb.

His mind screamed in protest, trying to force himself to move by sheer willpower alone, or to wake himself from such a terrible dream, but he was suddenly blinded by a coruscation of blue flames. When he next was able to open his eyes, he was in complete darkness apart from two eerie blue figures. He recognised them immediately, this time.

Alis and Lutz. Lutz gazed around him with a confused look on his face, then Alis walked up to him and offered him a hand, a radiant smile on her ethereally beautiful features. He caught her in a warm embrace. The flames rippled and turned into the image of a sleek-furred cat wrapping itself around their legs and nuzzling them, eyes half-closed in feline contentment. Three out of the four heroes of Algol; but then, he was here too. He suddenly felt a little guilty, despite the curiosity he knew he shared with Lutz; this wasn't his time or place. It wasn't his special shared moment.

Alis turned to Rune and smiled at him, too, as if to reassure him that everything was going to be okay, before reaching out her hand...

With a sound like shattering crystal, the Elsydeon burst into cerulean flames and floated out of his hands. Its light enveloped him for a second time and he was suddenly standing on the surface of Rykros, quartz and emerald crystal-dust lapping at his robes in the wind that carried the voice of Algol's memories.

He was outside the Silence Temple. Its topaz-yellow crystalline form looked as though it had grown naturally, although it had doors and hallways and a central chamber where the voice of Le Roof, serene deity of knowledge, waited for its next audience between thousands of years of pondering. That would be his usual first port of call if he had urgent questions about the fate of Algol that needed answering. He knew it wasn't where he needed to go this time.

In the distance, to the southwest, the direction of the Anger Tower, smoke and flames rose high into the sky. The flames, unnaturally blood-red, cast shadows so dark they seemed to consume light, blotting out the usual sight of the mysterious strips of land that floated like winged snakes through the Rykrosian inner atmosphere, a slight malfunction that suggested the planet's gravity to be artificially maintained. Rune pointed the Elsydeon in the direction of the Anger Tower, where Chaz had walked into the inner chamber on his own as if in a trance and walked out white as a ghost and having mysteriously learned to cast the most powerful destructive magic known to Algol. The sword flared red and Rune was forced to drop it to avoid being burned, and to stop the enraged screams from deafening him.

It was the worst possible place in the entire Solar System for something to have gone wrong.

* * *

"Welcome back, Wren. Guess what! I killed all the Earthmen for you."

"I am no longer Wren," the control android told her calmly. Her face had appeared on the main display of the communications system. The image was breaking up a little from the sheer distance it was being transmitted through two nodes but he recognised her immediately. Her hair looked a little wilder than usual, her eyes shining with fevered intensity, her grin manic. Data memory, long-range interplanetary communications and telepathic augmentation equipment was strewn haphazardly around her, wires trailing in every direction with her practically inserted inside, as though she had attempted to make a nest, "I am the guest of another Wren, and he outranks me, so..."

"So you surrendered your name? Well, you shouldn't. You should always keep a tight hold of your identity, especially when someone stronger than you tries to take it away from you, make you into something you aren't. As I was saying, Wren. I killed all the Earthmen. Teleported them into deep space. I knew they had come from somewhere that wasn't there any more, like a ship that had moved or a planet that had been destroyed or something. I watched them decompress and explode in the vacuum of space. Vacuum doesn't affect me. My body isn't here any more, you see. I managed to upload my consciousness into the naturally occurring memory banks of planet Rykros. I'm part of a planet, Wren!"

"Doran, please stop firing upon Motavia," said the android, "You will destroy the planet you wish to save. It is not necessary to fire at the holograms, even if you wish to attack the ships. The holograms are being generated by the ships."

"Do you think I don't realise that? It's you who don't understand what is happening to Algol! Their messages are the product of the taint that has affected every star system, every civilisation in Rykros' orbit. The planet Earth was destroyed, you know. It was a terrible place, with no great legend you can read about just by looking at the stars and listening to your own fantasies, no music in the air, a place where people did nothing but lived, mated and died for no reason. People became obsessed with pleasure, and even invented their own overarching stories to replace what was missing, treating them as sacred truths, and then fought wars over them until they destroyed their own planet. And now that taint is infecting Algol, a plague brought here willingly by its carriers. I plan to burn away every last ion of that taint, even if I have to burn away Motavia along with it! Palma burned for Algol, to herald the return of Dark Force, so why not Motavia?"

"You are behaving irrationally. You do not wish to destroy an entire planet. Too many people would die. They are players in the story of Algol as well. And you have said yourself that a drastic change to Algol would be the worst possible thing. What more drastic a change than the destruction of a planet? And, Doran, you are not authorised to speak as if you were the will of Algol. Nobody is - not myself, not Wren, not even Demi. We can only maintain the lives and their homes that are necessary for Algol to exist at all, while fate carries out its own plan for them. To destroy Motavia, you do nobody's work but the Profound Darkness."

"The Profound Darkness is a necessary part of the fate of Algol as well. In fact, it is Algol's reason for existing. I would rather surrender my will to the Profound Darkness than allow a single Earthman to live or for their voice to be heard in my beautiful stars. And do you know what it is that links the saviours of Algol to the Profound Darkness?"

"Power?" guessed the android.

"Megid," said Doran, "The purifying light of total annihilation. A power given to both the Protectors and the Profound Darkness - by Re-Faze! And now Re-Faze has given the power of Megid to me. I can use the power without restriction - because I am no longer connected directly to Le Roof, I am connected directly to Re-Faze!"

"What is Re-Faze?" asked the android.

"The Guardian of the Tower of Anger," explained Demi, "The entity who gave the power of Megid to Chaz. But this is not the same situation," she said, "Chaz was deliberately given a restricted version of Megid. He was asked to prove that he did not desire to use the power, and would not use it thoughtlessly. This scenario... it would never happen!"

"Well, it has," Wren pointed out.

The story made no sense. And, when the control android looked into Doran's madly staring eyes, he saw little of sense left in them.

Then the image on the display screen began to steadily break up, consumed by a sudden surge of red-tinged static, until the android was left only with the angry hissing of white noise and a screen full of surging crimson, as though the raw, concentrated anger had consumed its wielder whole, and there was nothing left but Re-Faze's blindly destructive will.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Text

The winds of Rykros had been whipped up into a frenzy, as if the planet's own neutral calm, its will as observer and historian, had been disturbed by whatever was happening to it. Silicon dust storms stung Rune's flesh and attacked his eyes and mouth, forcing him to pull his hood up over his head, which he hated doing, because he couldn't see where he was going (not that he could see where he was going other than in the direction of the intense red light that could be his own eyes bleeding for all he knew) and it made him look too much like the real Lutz. He heard the grating roars of Carmineheads, twin-headed living stone gargoyles, and the screeches of Culla-Bellrs, the low, constant whine of the light beams that spewed out of their mouths when they attacked their prey. The natural denizens of Rykros, fierce predators designed to guard the Towers and test the would-be Protectors who sought Le Roof's knowledge, were enraged by the shift in mood, attacking anything they saw on sight, including each other. Elsydeon still flared, its aura blue now as it fought off the infectious rage itself, its single-minded consciousness tugging at Rune's mind, willing him to take the sword in hand and fight off the evil threats to Algol it sensed all around it. Rune wished he could - if only to stop them killing him first - but he hadn't the first clue how to use a sword and doubted he was strong or agile enough to learn. A wizard was trained to keep calm and focussed in battle, maybe a few tricks with a quarterstaff in case he succumbed to psychic exhaustion just as someone decided to attack him, but Espers weren't physically strong people and they were supposed to fight in teams with Protectors to shield them while they provided covering fire. Where is Chaz when I need him, the useless little runt? What about those three androids who were so keen to fight for Algol a week ago? But he knew that things were going wrong everywhere in the solar system, not just on Rykros. They were probably all busy protecting their own people and homes, fighting their own battles.

Shielded by the same winds that were threatening to tear him apart, he managed to reach the front gates of the Anger Tower. They were wide open, the doors having been torn off their hinges by the guardian monsters that had poured out of the Tower and rampaged in random directions, slaughtering each other if there was no prey to hunt. Their fighting amongst themselves was the only reason they hadn't tried to invade the Silence Temple and trash Le Roof's chamber yet. Rune was relieved to note that the Tower wasn't actually on fire, although the actual cause of the flickering red, orange and black shadows drained away that relief again: Re-Faze, his tri-pronged flaming form sillhouetted against the sky. The energy-being (it was difficult to describe in words the form of a Rykrosian entity, godlike but simple, a function of the Universe given a body) was hundreds of times larger than when Rune had last saw him, so large that he had burst out of his abode in the upper chamber of his Tower, melting the spires of the crystalline structure with the unimaginable heat and magical power that he radiated, so that the tower looked like a volcano of molten glass frozen mid-eruption. Re-Faze's core pulsed with a blinding emerald light.

"Legeon!" yelled Rune, pointing his staff at the creatures in front of the gate and channelling his will through it. A wave of giant blue-white fireballs streamed from his staff, immolating the monsters in seconds. Stepping over the piles of ash as he climbed the steps into the tower, he was surprised at how little fatigue he had felt from casting one of the most powerful combat spells he knew. He wondered if the Elsydeon, whose light was now brightly shining the same colour as the divine flames of Legeon, had something to do with it; if it couldn't be used directly as a weapon, it would still play its part in the battle!

The Anger Tower wasn't time-consuming or complicated to navigate. It wasn't that sort of trial; its danger was meant to lie in only one test, not even a battle, only a purity of the heart that was either present or missing, to be judged by a single answer to a simple question. The rules of the game had changed now, but fortunately Re-Faze either didn't have mysterious maze-constructing powers or was too angry to bother using them. Rune felt the irate fury like the overpowering heat of the Motavian desert, at midday, in an area where the Motavians had dismantled the terraforming equipment on purpose to spite the Palmans and built modern art out of it. He had to keep casting Deban just to keep himself from dying of heatstroke.

Finally, kicking away the corpse of a Bloodsaber who had tried to stab him as he climbed the stairs, he was at the door of Re-Faze's chamber. It had been melted away, so what he actually saw was the sky, and Re-Faze looming above him. Directly below that, he saw machinery strewn around the floor, covered in dust and molten glass, wires trailing up the walls as though they had been fixed to something on the ceiling when the room had been intact.

He heard a voice in his mind that he recognised from his dreams.

"Brother! Come, you must look! I am purifying Algol of its every imperfection!"

The core flared again in time to the voice. He looked up at the core and squinted hard; inside its emerald facets, he could just make out the silhouette of a young female figure, absolutely covered in wires from head to foot.

"The taint has returned to Algol - it has travelled around the galaxy, corrupting so many solar systems, destroying entire planets or worse, twisting their destinies into empty shells - but now I am finally ready for it! I can stop it in its tracks and completely erase it! Algol will be its grave - no, its crematorium!"

"Are you saying you want Algol to be on fire?" yelled Rune, both out loud and in his mind, praying that she could actually hear one of them and wasn't too far gone to understand the words, "Doran... look, I'm sorry, I'm not your brother, not any more... this thing that's gone wrong... it's Re-Faze! Anyone can clearly see! The memory banks of Rykros must have decayed with age..."

Rune's world exploded with red light as a Megid technique almost flung him off the tower; he would have been incinerated on the spot if it hadn't been for his paranoid casting of Deban and the pale blue aura that now protectively surrounded him as well as the sword; Elsydeon didn't want him for its collection quite yet.

"How dare you accuse me of being senile!" a voice boomed in his head, also female but clearly not the girl he had been talking to - or at least, not just her, "Do you presume to know the will of the solar system, just because you hold a pretty toy, because your ancestors at some point dabbled in playing at being me? You don't even hold those skills any more - they died out long ago! Then you finally discovered what you were playing with and you tried to use my power - to control me, as you tried to control the deserts and the snowstorms and the tides!"

It's Re-Faze who is in control, thought Rune, Re-Faze who is doing this, although Doran might have started it off - who knows what she got up to in all that time, alone on an inhospitable alien planet, already going mad, her memory backed up so many times she could never die? Damaged minds, both humans and planets... an endless feedback loop of insanity...

"I'm getting you out of there, Doran!" promised Rune. Another Megid; this time he was expecting it. Instead of trying futilely to brace himself against a half-demolished wall, he drew the sword and held it out in front of him. It wasn't as heavy as he imagined it to be; it sort of held itself up. He idly wondered if he would have been able to wield it himself, if he learned the technique, then he wouldn't need to rely on idiots like Chaz...

Spell-fire struck sword like fire hitting ice, and they washed over each other, flames in crimson and cerulean dancing and leaping all around Rune, notes like a rain of shattering glass ringing out. The Tower was gone, the sky was eclipsed by darkness, nothing remained but the twin fires of Re-Faze and the Elsydeon, pure serenity and righteous fury, duellists, dance partners, mates. He swung as he leapt forward into the abyss, striking the emerald core again and again. Beside him, he saw the blue flames coalesce into ghostly figures - Alis, Myau, Odin and Lutz (Noah, Alis had called him... did he have two names, as Rune had been both Rune and Lutz?). The red flames also took forms, those of Zio, the Profound Darkness in Her final angelic form, Doran and what looked unnervingly like Wren. Rune suddenly feared for the android's safety, that the insane spirit had thought to choose Wren as His avatar, the one person that Rune would have voted least likely to be possessed by an eldritch horror from the stars, had there been a questionnaire. Still, the image did not break his concentration, as it was almost certainly meant to do; he left the apparitions to fight each other in the arena of the combined mind-worlds of the two godlike spirits as he concentrated on striking the crystal. Cracks were already beginning to form inside it, their jagged circuit-board patterns lighting up. Alis' flashing blade struck the Profound Darkness, Lutz met Zio's spells, Odin threw himself at Wren, his armour stopping a Photon Eraser blast.

That left only Myau and Doran.

* * *

"What in Algol's name do you think you are doing?"

Wren grabbed the other android by the throat, picked him up in one hand and threw him against the far wall. He convulsed, sparks flying from his connectors, as the damage from being incorrectly removed from a larger device surged through his system. He was still too dazed to react when the first bolt from the Photon Eraser hit him, taking off one of his arms. The second shot, aimed at his chest where his CPU was and fully capable of punching a hole straight through his chest and the wall behind it, was averted only by Demi using Phononmezer on Wren.

"I apologise, but I have observed you tanking a direct Phononmezer hit before with little difficulty, and you needed to be apprehended. Your optical lenses are glowing red," Demi pointed out, "Are you malfunctioning?"

"Demi... if you do not stop siding with the saboteur, I will consider you to have defected to the enemy."

"Saboteur? Explain yourself. I saw only that the android immobilised the forces attacking us, then began negotiations with another force that was firing upon Algol."

"Negotiation? That Motherbrain plant was in control of those forces all along! He only stopped attacking because he had achieved everything he wanted to - he used the forces as a beacon for the ships, then used them as a targeting device for the installation he has set up on Rykros! And now he has Nurvus under control... probably Zelan too... and you! He has hacked you, too!"

"I think you are the one who has been hacked..." said Demi, hearing the crackling static that distorted Wren's voice module, the unhealthy red glow in his eyes, the way his hands shook as he pointed his Photon Eraser at Demi and his weapons systems - including a primed Positron Bolt - at the other android, who was still slumped in the corner, a look of disbelief in his wide eyes as he stared at his would-be executioner. Wren didn't fire at unarmed prisoners, even if he really wanted to. His hands never shook. He didn't have any red LEDs in his eyes and his voicebox turned off when it detuned, it didn't turn to static. The only thing in the building that could do red lights and static was the thing on the display screen.

"Is that all you can say in your defense? So be it. I have changed your security setting to 'class 1 threat to Algol'," said Wren, then he fired the Positron Bolt.

"NOT NEAR THE CONSOLE!" yelled Demi, throwing herself protectively in front of her equipment. The blast hit her firmly in every part of her body at once, throwing her at the display screen. Her optical sensors went blank. Her audio sensors were down, too, but she could feel the vibrations of Wren's heavy footsteps. She scanned her control terminal; still functioning. Good. Blindly rummaging underneath the terminal, she found a hidden hatch, which she bashed open with her fist. Small cylindrical objects spilled out into her hands; repair beam canisters. Trimate for androids. Good; she knew her facility well enough to remember where she kept the repair kit. That would buy her a little time. She stabbed herself in the chest with it and felt the lattice of repair beams flood her system, connecting loose circuits, defragmenting damaged code, welding her left leg back on. There was a satisfied 'beep' and she could see again. Her Barrier was down – she had kept it up as soon as Wren began behaving oddly, and it had been the only thing that saved her from the Posibolt – then she grabbed a handful more of the repair canisters and walked towards Wren.

"You are malfunctioning, Wren," she declared, "You have been critically malfunctioning for a long time. As a medical android, I apologise for not noticing it earlier. I would have recalled you from duty straight away. Now, if you would kindly allow me to treat you..."

Wren's eyes flared, then he answered her with a Photon Eraser bolt to the face. It refracted off her Barrier but it still knocked her backward. The cannisters spilled out of her hands. She quite calmly replaced the Barrier and bent down to pick them up, then continued walking towards Wren.

"Wren, you are malfunctioning..." she repeated.

"What is that?" asked the android, suddenly, "Oh, yes. One of those animals. Those are sold in Skure."

Demi glanced around briefly, confused. The image on the display had changed. The red static was still there but it briefly flickered off, replaced with another image; a small Musk Cat, outlined in blue, like an old photograph.

"That is Myau," she told him, glancing back at Wren and hoping that the Burst Rockets he was charging wouldn't be primed in the next five seconds, "You can tell because he is wearing battle claws."

"Oh. Myau of the First Era legends," said the android conversationally, as though he wasn't missing an arm and still in a room with an out-of-control combat android, "He was your favourite, wasn't he, Doran? You do like those animals. You bought ten of them from Skure. Musk Cats are still alive on Dezolis, you know. They fled Skure and migrated to a cave that was still warm due to proximity to the original fires of the Eclipse Torch. Would you like to see pictures of their habitat?"

Then the android was at Demi's terminal again, searching for images and sending them to the entity on the other end of the communication: Pictures of Musk Cats sleeping curled up on their ledges in Myst Vale. Statues of Alis in the Esper Mansion. The statue of Alis and Myau in its shrine on a hill in Termi. Monks chanting their devotions before the Eclipse Torch in the Gumbious Temple. The Aeroprism in the Soldier's Temple. The stores of Alshline in the chaotic Motavian market town of Tonoe. Owl roosting on the peaks of the indomitable mountains of Dezolis. A herd of Rappies running across the wild desert that reclaimed Motavia year by year. The Baya Malay Baker, walking through the ruined streets of Aiedo and loudly peddling his wares to the hungry survivors. People everywhere, singing the ancient songs as they lived and worked, even though they might not know the exact tune or all the same words. All the little things about Algol that had never changed and would never change in any number of millennia. But mostly Musk Cats. Doran liked Musk Cats.

_I'm sorry, Re-Faze. I can't attack a Musk Cat. I can't attack Myau, and I definitely can't attack Alis. And I don't want to attack my brother. _

_You show weakness in the face of battle? You really are just a madwoman?_

_I'm so sorry... everything you said made so much sense up to now, but if these are really things you can attack and say it's for the good of Algol... Re-Faze, I... I think my brother is right... I think there may be something wrong with you... That makes you the weak one. That makes you the mad one._

_But we are defeating your enemies, are we not?_

_I don't think you're protecting Algol any more. I think you're just attacking things that happen to be Algol's enemies at the moment. I think your enemies are everything. Everything in the whole Universe. And that's not what you're for. And that means you're broken!_

With the next blow, the crystal shattered into billions of pieces and cascaded across the void like the violent formation of a new Universe. Like a fire being sucked through a window, Re-Faze's raw essence no longer had a stable physical shell to contain it, and so was sucked into it's only receptacle, the Elsydeon.

The only thing left was the image of Doran, cross-legged in empty space, Myau in her lap, purring.

"The others have gone and left us behind, meow, it's time to go," commented the cat.

"Just give me a moment. I'll be right behind you. I've got something important I need to tell my brother," said Doran, releasing her hold on the cat. Myau loped off into the Elsydeon. The girl stood up and walked towards Rune.

"Laconia is known for its magically conductive properties, you know," she told him, as if addressing a research partner or even a student, "So it isn't unusual for high volumes of magical energy to gather within a large mass of Laconia. Rykros has known for thousands of years that it is malfunctioning. It has been collecting the telepathic residue of lives that are most prominent in the fate of Algol, so that they may be stored for posterity, inside Alis' sword of Laconia – so that Rykros has a backup drive for all its most important information. But it isn't just a backup drive. It's a recovery install program. Re-Faze is the part of Rykros that broke down first. It needs a highly powerful telepath to restart it."

"Is that what you were doing, when you were possessed?"

"Possessed? No, I surrendered to it of my own will. I was too weak-willed and too angry. The things that want to hurt Algol, to change what Algol is, have always hurt me too, so I wanted to lash out at them, to destroy them all so they wouldn't haunt me any more."

"I'm sorry that you were hurt like that."

She shrugged, "We're Algol's tools. Tools wear out. I don't think what I've done was all bad, and Algol will be saved either way. Re-Faze's way would just be the worst possible way to save it. If you think you can mend Rykros, please, go ahead. It's fitting that you should be the person to do so."

"The Elsydeon chose you too."

"It's an afterlife. Dezolisians believe the afterlife is a place to expiate your sins, to completely blank your soul for your next reincarnation. The process isn't pretty, but it's necessary, and it's what happens to you if you haven't earned your way out of it by performing miracles," she said, "By the way, you should be prepared for what happens when you fix Rykros. There's data in there that has been damaged since Algol was created. Who knows what it looks like when it's fixed? And... there's something that initially damaged Rykros. The thing I was looking for. It did exist, and I felt its presence – I just got too many false readings because my instrument was damaged to tell exactly what it was. I think you'll be the first to find out."

"Thanks for the heads-up," said Rune.

"Just being a good sister," she said, then turned to the sword and added, irritably, "Yes, Myau, okay, I'm coming, I'm coming!"

The Elsydeon flared, then there was just darkness. Rune lay unconscious for hours, his brain caught up in simply understanding what had happened to him. Then he woke up. The Elsydeon was tightly gripped in his arms, and he lay curled up in a crystal courtyard where the Anger Tower once stood.


	12. Chapter 12

The doors of the Silence Temple slid open as Rune approached them, as silently and smoothly as any spaceport automatic door in Zelan. The Tower had a small dock for a spaceship, despite being older than any civilisation in Algol. An immense feeling of calm hit him. He was a guest of the oldest and most powerful authorities in Algol. This room, the planet, was at the same time a part of its form and just another of its tools. He walked straight across a T-junction and through the massive crystal arches that led into Le Roof's chamber. Usually it was featureless except for a rear door that led to the spaceship dock and an intricate spiral pattern carved into the floor, meant as a map of the galaxy, a physical representation of Le Roof and the runes for the network of thousands of different techniques, simple and complex, that wove together to make the physical manifestation of Le Roof. Three red crystals on the floor designated where the visitor was meant to stand to receive Le Roof. Today, there was also a crystal plinth, organically shaped as if it had sprung up overnight, with a holder for the sword. Le Roof had been expecting him.

Rune walked up to the centre of the room and rested the sword on the plinth. A column of blue light shot from the blade, hit the ceiling and washed across the walls, glittering as it refracted off every facet of the crystals. The light spread through the chamber and into the corridors beyond, then up the outer walls of the Temple, before rising into the Rykrosian night sky. The room went dark and Rune watched through the images projected into the darkness as the blue light outside hit one of the floating strips of rock, where it bounced off one to the next, redirecting the light in a path that swiftly brought it to the other towers; first the Towers of Strength and Courage, then beyond, to others that Rune never knew existed. There were other tests to be had by different types of heroes, here on Rykros; there were other entities whose light and information-being embodied other concepts... Rykros was such a huge place, compared to what Rune thought it was, and now it was covered in a blue glow like the reflection of a computer terminal's display in a window in Second Era Paseo...

When the light hit, Rykros changed. Rune saw firsthand how the world molded structures out of crystal when and where it needed, to interact with visitors or to build houses for the entities and the tools it was given to safeguard over the aeons. Now the whole planet was rippling and shifting like water disturbed by a thrown pebble. Repairing itself, Rune understood now. It wasn't anything so obvious as fallen walls being rebuilt or holes being filled - it was as though the very aura of the planet was gradually brighter, broader, without any of the red tinges or the static, without ever flickering or wavering.

Then Le Roof spoke to Rune:

_I apologise for the inconvenience. It is difficult for me to believe that one of us would go this far, to create deliberate damage that would spread like a virus to others of us. It is an unforgivable crime, and an even less forgivable lack of foresight that we did not realise what was happening until too late._

Before Algol was created, we were the only entities to exist in the galaxy. We were the very stars, the fires of the galaxy, the very minds. We were information, and we fed off information, and we expanded. As the world around us grew more complex, life began to evolve. We in turn expanded as they taught us and were taught by us - they were constantly living, breeding and dying, we simply existed and grew, and our ways of being were such that we learnt very different things about our Universe.

Then, inevitably, two of our number fought a war. It began with an argument, the details of which were petty, and now lost to us. The argument was not resolved over the millennia and it began to escalate. Countless worlds were destroyed, countless solar systems such as Algol. Soon it was impossible for others of our kind not to be caught in the crossfire. We were so huge by this time that it was impossible for us to reconstructed in the same way twice if we were ever deleted - none of us had the memory capacity to store the exact content of another of our kind, and we were beginning to grow organically to emulate the mortal races. For this reason, deleting another is an unforgivable crime - almost as unforgivable as creating viruses. But it was not unthinkable. The two warring entities had fallen so far that they were not above using any unspeakable means to destroy the other. And, as they were equally matched, neither side could be destroyed by anything less than the destruction of the Universe.

Realising the inevitable eventual consequences of this war, we met in conclave and decided to combine our efforts to strike against the two entities. We were not lured into the trap of overtly joining in the war, but we slowly hemmed them into one area of the galaxy while they were too busy fighting a battle there to notice. We managed to pull them apart by creating an entire solar system as a seal around one of them, the weakest. In truth it was a double seal, imprisoning one entity within it and preventing another from ever approaching the solar system. The stronger entity was shunned by our entire race, unable to access our memory banks. We then created another planet, with an orbit around the entire galaxy, and appointed a team of guards to monitor the prisoner while keeping tabs on the wandering exile wherever he may be, in case he try to lash out at another of us. It would be a simple matter to create another prison for him now that he was isolated. The Warden of Rykros was Re-Faze, an entity authorised to use force against another for the first time in our history, and I was the keeper of Rykros' records. Over time, intelligent life evolved in our new solar system, as it inevitably did in systems with sun-like stars. Once they grew responsible enough, we tried to teach them to assist us in the simpler aspects of our guard duties, and we gave them some of our powers as compensation for their having been forced to live near a dangerous prison.

_"Are you saying that Algol is...?"_

_That is correct. Algol is not only a prison for the Profound Darkness, it is a ward against the return of the Great Light. Or, as their names actually translate to, 'unbearably bright light that blinds and burns everything it touches 'and 'the nightmare in the cold and the darkness that all people fear'. _

_"Is that the thing that was tormenting Doran," asked Rune, "The Great Light?"_

_I can never tell what the mortals are thinking, but I do know that the Great Light has been subtly and maliciously affecting the evolution of species and the cycle of destinies within the worlds it has come into contact with. We will have not only the Great Light to deal with, but the entire worlds that are his mutant offspring. _

_"Is it going to come here?"_

_If it does so, I am afraid you will be forced fight it alongside us as Lutz, if you wish Algol to survive its visit. It has taken down Re-Faze. It attempted to damage the specific data sectors that contained knowledge of its own exile, making it look blameless in the Profound Darkness incident. Its intention is clearly to attack us, either as revenge or to break the curfew on its exile. We will still attempt to imprison it, but it will be difficult now that we do not have Re-Faze and can't directly attack it - and, as you have seen from the Profound Darkness, our imprisonment method is not foolproof. _

_"Chaz always said he didn't trust the Great Light," noted Rune with a smile, "He was smarter than I gave him credit for."_

_Indeed, mortals can always be trusted to question authority. _

_"The ironic thing, it's what Lutz tells them to do. I guess that makes Lutz not a real authority," said Rune._

_But Lutz is still the person charged with the defense of Algol. I shall be expecting to see you if and when the battle starts, Lutz. _

_"And I'll be expecting you to work properly for a change," retorted Rune, "Um... by the way... I don't suppose you could teleport me back to Dezolis? I can't get back without the Elsydeon!"_

_A spaceship is heading towards Rykros. I believe it contains a Wren android that I have seen travelling with you before. _

_"Well... that's... convenient... what is he, a taxi?" Rune scratched the back of his head. Then he remembered the image of Wren he had seen in Re-Faze's vision made manifest. It had probably been the delusion of multiple powerful, insane psychics, and he had seen Doran go back to normal, but he still figured he had better be careful. He gathered his power, ready to cast Tandle, as he watched the spaceship approach Rykros on the display that Le Roof made for him._

* * *

_Demi watched the Landale take off. As it rocketed into the upper atmosphere, only a wink of light was visible as it secondary thrusters fired to give it the kick it needed to break free of its orbit. Even though Wren had scanned as completely repaired on the last sweep of her sensors, she was still worried for him and about him; that he would lose control and forget how to fly a spaceship, or would suddenly decide that firing all the ship's guns at Dezolis again would be a good idea. _

_After the bizarre phenomenon on Nurvus' display screen had disappeared, replaced with a view of the calm Rykrosian landscape, Wren had also calmed down. He submitted to a full repair by Demi, then apologised profusely and even let the other android have his spare Pulsecannon. He had given it straight back; he had been stripped of all his combat modules and his memory of combat training was erased during his imprisonment by Motherbrain and it hadn't been something he reinstalled in secret on Zelan - it would have been something the scanners looked for, and besides, he didn't like fighting._

_Then Wren had said something to persuade him._

_"You could always join the Rogues," he suggested, "They could do with the official face of a control android to make them look more respectable without breaching their code of political neutrality, and the Rogue Lodge would be a suitable sanctuary for someone who wishes to both start a new life and protect Algol. Your ability to defy even Motherbrain gives you the perfect mentality for an organisation that will defend Algol even when it makes you the enemy of everyone on Algol."_

_"Do you think they will take a representative of Motherbrain?" asked the android._

_"You are not a representative of Motherbrain," said Wren, "And the Rogues will have to be able to take in anyone, if they wish to build a reputation as a fresh start from outcasts. Many outcasts are unwanted because they have genuinely done bad things."_

_"If you say you have forgiven me, why do you not want me working under you?" he asked._

_"Because I want you to use your own name, Wren, and it is not possible for two androids to be called Wren," he said, "High-level androids work alone in different facilities, but communicate to bring about the good of Algol. It's time for you to find your own place. Please have your reply ready by the time I come back from Rykros. I want to check that everything is truly resolved up there."_

_Since that time, Demi and the other Wren had been helping the surviving Rogues carry their wounded back home to the Vahal Fortress. Demi decided to give them the Fortress as their base, seeing as they had done so well at holding it for as long as possible. They even managed to pull one of the Landrovers out of the river. The Hunters were already picking up the pieces in Aiedo; Demi waved at Chaz and Rika as they helped wounded civilians out of a collapsed building by using Zan on the rubble to lift it up._

_On the way back to their base, they passed Nalya. Their repair attempt wasn't going as well; there wasn't enough left of the village. It had been wrecked once before by the crash-landing of the original spaceship, and then by Zio's invading army. There were whispers that it simply wasn't a good place to have a village. As the two androids discussed this, Enma cried out a warning and pointed to a small figure running towards them through the desert sands, waving at them and screaming. _

_"Do you require medical aid?" asked Demi as the small Palman boy ran up to her. He looked to be around eight years old, tall for his age, with deep brown hair._

_"Um... are you the guys who fought off the bad lady from the ship?"_

_"I didn't, but these people did," explained Demi. The child looked up at the leader of the Rogues, who was slightly vague-eyed from the amount of Trimate she had doped herself with to ease the pain of her injuries, "We stopped the... the other bad lady. The one who caused the fires," Demi wasn't sure how to simplify things for children but she thought she was getting the general idea._

_"Oh, she wasn't bad. That's just what happens when you do bad stuff - bad things happen to you. It's 'cause everyone followed the bad lady," he said with the solemn certainty of a child who had already decided how the world worked, "Everyone in the village went away and left me alone. I was the only one who knew not to follow her. I always knew they'd go away and leave me alone one day. You guys are the same, aren't you - you can stay behind when the others go away?"_

_Nisa nodded, "You must be clever, to know about that at your age."_

_"I can see all sorts of things the grown-ups can't," he said, "And I knew about you guys, too. Can I join you?"_

_"Is there anyone left who can take care of you?" she asked._

_He shook his head, "I told you, they all left me behind. They're gone forever, now. It's their own fault. Can I join you?" he repeated._

_"I guess someone has to look after you," she shrugged, "But it's a hard life, being a Rogue. You have to train every day. You okay with that? I could just drop you off at Aiedo."_

_"I know how to fight a bit. I help chase the Monsterflies. Hit them with a stick. And the people from Aiedo will go away and leave me too, one day. Forever," he added for clarification._

_"I think someone wants to keep him," said Azda. They all glanced up at the huge Motavian, who had been watching the boy with his blank red orbs and avian gaze. For Enma, it was a remarkably friendly expression._

_"Motavians are fluffy AND scary," said the boy conversationally as they walked back to the Landrover, "How do they do that?" _

_"I have no idea," admitted the leader of the Rogues, "Hey, kid, I forgot to ask your name!"_

_"I'm Diggory," he said, "But everyone knows that's too long a name, so I call myself Digo."_

_"I'm Nisa, the scary fluffy guy is Enma, the gormless kid is Azda and that there is Wren, our other new recruit," she gestured to the android, "Welcome to the Rogues. The idiots who stay behind when everyone else goes away."_

_The Motavian opened the door to the Landrover and waited for everyone to pile in, Nisa in the front, Wren and the kids in the back. As Azda and Digo argued over which seat they got, Enma put his foot on the accelerator and they sped off in a cloud of sand, knocking over an unfortunate Grasshound that failed to escape from their precariously swerving path through the desert. _

_There were already five of them, so Demi started walking in the other direction, back to Nurvus, to start work on some repairs while she waited for Wren – not the new Wren she had met, but the Wren to whom she was closer than anyone or anything in the whole of Algol - to come home._


End file.
